Permanent Housing
The ultimate
goal for all people experiencing homelessness is to secure and retain permanent
housing. Permanent housing strategies offer individuals and families short- or
long-term rental subsidies in combination with varied levels of supportive
services, as some may require permanent supportive housing, while those with
lower needs may be successful in rapid re-housing programs.
The Permanent Supportive Housing Program (Strategy D7) provides individuals and families experiencing long-term homelessness with supportive housing by funding high quality tenant services and, when needed, local rental subsidies.
Significant outcomes for this program (as seen in the graph below) include:
- In the first nine months of fiscal year 2018-2019, 2,934 individuals were linked to Intensive Case Management Services (ICMS), the supportive services that enable them to secure and retain housing.
- Between July 2018 and March 2019, 1,725 individuals were approved for federal rental subsidies and 1,117 individuals were approved for local rental subsidies, which will enable them to pay the rent once housed.
- In the first 21 months of implementation, 2,471 people were placed in Measure H-funded permanent supportive housing.
Rapid Re-Housing (Strategy B3) provides individuals and families experiencing homelessness with time-limited rental subsidies and supportive services, enabling them to quickly secure housing and pay their rent until they are able to cover the costs on their own.
Rapid re-housing programs enrolled 8,857 individuals and family members in the first nine months of fiscal year 2018/2019. There are 13,787 participants who are currently in rapid re-housing programs. Nearly 5,000 participants in the program have been placed in permanent housing with or without a rapid re-housing subsidy. Over the past nine months, 1,483 individuals and family members who secured housing with a rapid re-housing subsidy remained in permanent housing after exiting the program; this equates to 82% of all those who secured housing with a rapid re-housing subsidy and exited the program.
The Homeless Incentive Program (HIP) (Strategy B4) helps homeless individuals and families who have federal housing subsidies to secure permanent supportive housing by incentivizing landlords to accept the subsidies and offering assistance with deposits and move-in costs.
In the first nine months of fiscal year 2018-2019, tenants served by the Housing Authority of Los Angeles County (HACoLA), as well as housing authorities in the Cities of Los Angeles, Long Beach, Burbank, Glendale, Pomona, Redondo Beach, and Pasadena, secured 1,223 units with the help of landlord incentives. The success of this program is fueled by the $3,611,949 in tenant deposits and $2,922,133 in landlord incentives that the County has funded since July 2018. The data below for fiscal year 2018-2019 includes outcomes from the housing authorities listed above; the data from fiscal year 2017-2018 reflects only HACoLA outcomes.
Claudia Finds Renewed Hope
Claudia
B (age 27) lived in a vehicle for
more than a year with her two sons due
to a breakdown of her family support system.
She was a walk-in to St. Joseph Center in December 2017 and assigned a
case manager.
Thanks
to St. Joseph, Claudia obtained multiple motel
vouchers and a
host of support, including a housing choice voucher, job
leads, gift cards, groceries, beds, bus tokens, etc. These essential resources gave Claudia a
deeper sense of self-worth and hopefulness, and a renewed trust in
relationships that would help her create a safe environment and stick to her
housing stability plan.
Recently,
Claudia showed her case manager a video of her son walking into their new home,
with joy and excitement and tears in her eyes.
Since being housed, Claudia has found
a job and has both children in school.
“St. Joseph Center provided me with one of the best case workers ever,
Donovan. He has stuck by me through
everything and he made sure I had a place to stay when I was sleeping in my car
with my two boys. There was a moment
when I wanted to give up but Donovan and his team reassured me that there would
be better days and to just keep the faith.
And I must say, if I didn’t walk into the St. Joseph office, I wouldn’t
be the person I have grown into today and I thank everybody.”
Thinking Outside the Box to Address Homelessness
The Los Angeles County Homeless Initiative announced the winners of the first-ever Housing Innovation Challenge, a call for proposals that has awarded $4.5 million in Measure H funding for game-changing creative and scalable permanent housing solutions for those experiencing homelessness in Los Angeles County. The Housing Innovation Challenge has made four awards at the $1 million level and one at the $500,000 level for faster, cost-effective construction/rehabilitation and/or creative finance models to produce permanent housing for the County’s most vulnerable residents.