Homelessness

Tackling the homelessness crisis

In one of the richest cities in the richest country in the history of the planet, there is no reason that anyone should be sleeping in their car, or worried about getting evicted from their home. Safe and dignified housing is a human right.

Advancing a Housing First Model
We will partner with city services, county and state agencies, mutual aid providers, and other stakeholders to supply permanent housing without unrealistic preconditions to people acquiring shelter. These include:

• -Supportive Housing: Prioritize permanent housing with services needed to keep people housed.
• -Interim Shelters: Connect people in need to interim housing beds, if permanent housing isn’t available.
• -Document Readiness: Working with people to apply for public benefits, acquire IDs, and secure other documents when they are on the streets or in shelters so they are prepped and ready when a permanent housing unit becomes available.
• -Numbers Count: Measure success by the number of people permanently housed, not by program completion rates or other arbitrary metrics.

Increase Supportive Housing Supply & Resources
Supportive housing is a combination of affordable housing and on-site support services that help people with complex challenges, such chronic mental and physical illness and substance use disorder. This evidence-based, best practice model provides formerly unhoused people stability, autonomy, and dignity while they recover from social and economic setbacks. Our policy includes:

• -New Construction: Invest in the construction of new permanent supportive housing units, with a focus on integrated, scattered-site models rather than large institutional shelters.
• -Subsidy Program: Create a Flexible Housing Subsidy Program, like the County of Los Angeles, that accesses locally funded housing vouchers with wraparound services.
• -Federal Housing Vouchers: Advocate for more federal project-based vouchers that are needed for permanent supportive housing.
• -Emergency Assistance: Provide more emergency rental assistance and long-term shallow subsidies to help extreme low-income individuals and families stay in their homes while navigating high rents.
• -Community Resource Hubs: Create comprehensive safety nets by investing in community resource hubs that offer shelter, meals, and wraparound services like job training and social support.
• -Voluntary Services: Provide voluntary access to life-improving services like mental health treatment and addiction treatment.

Strengthen Homelessness Prevention Efforts
Our guiding principle for affordable housing applies here as well, evidenced by a robust eviction prevention program, including legal aid, rental assistance, and landlord-tenant mediation, and aided by modern data gathering strategies. More specifically, our vision includes:

• Social Service Providers: Coordinate with social service providers and -increase funding to Family Source Centers, Navigation Centers, and other City funded-programs to identify and assist those at risk of losing their homes.
• -Data-Driven Solutions: Better leverage the Homeless Management Information System (HMIS) to set goals, track client data, and measure outcomes.
• -Scheduled Meetings: Convene regular meetings with all stakeholders, including government agencies, service providers, and people with lived experience of homelessness, to develop policy solutions and coordinate efforts.
• -Field Data: Use up-to-date field data to continuously evaluate and improve programs, identify gaps in services, and make evidence-based decisions.

Empower Previously Unsheltered People with Lived Experiences
We value community members who have had the experience of living on the streets, under a bridge overpass, an abandoned building, or a neglected parking lot. We want to learn from their experience and take lessons from their life narrative. This work includes:

• -Learning from Our Unhoused Neighbors: Ensure that people who have experienced homelessness or are currently unhoused have a meaningful voice in the design and implementation of policies and programs.
• -New Advocates: Provide training, mentorship, and employment opportunities for those with lived experience to become leaders and advocates in the homelessness sector.
• -Anti-Discrimination: Help policymakers actively combat stigma and discrimination against people experiencing homelessness.

Create Public Health Solutions to a Public Health Crisis
We believe that we can address any public health or safety concerns that arise when so many of our neighbors are living on the streets, while working diligently to bring them inside and off the streets. All constituents, housed and unhoused, suffer when our sidewalks are impassable and unclean. To address these public health challenges, we need programs, policies, and infrastructure that create sustainable solutions, not ones that sweep people from one neighborhood to another. These include:

• -Trash and Sanitation Services: Increase trash services, including more receptacles placed and regularly serviced at encampments and increased LA Sanitation services like power washing and dumpsters at our largest and most complex encampments.
• -Restroom Access: Increased access to 24/7 restrooms throughout the city, that both housed and unhoused people can use.
• -Personal Storage: Increase voluntary storage for unhoused people’s personal belongings;
• -Clarify Regulations: Create fair, clear and understandable rules for people living outside.
• -No More Encampment Sweeps: End the ineffective, expensive and violent sweeps of encampments which only push our houseless neighbors to other parts of the district and city - disconnecting people from the services they need to get off the streets and exacerbating the crisis.
• -Living Wage: Pay living wages to people working in our homelessness sector, including LA Homeless Service Authority (LAHSA) workers.

Shelter the Houseless Action Plan

• -Replicate the modular supportive housing complex, named Mercy Housing California, in DTLA, and help develop the next Mercy Housing units located in CD14’s Boyle Heights.
• -Strengthen funding resources for supportive housing such as Measure HHH.
• -Deploy teams to active cases of homelessness for rapid re-housing programs set aside for emergency cases.
• -Hire teams of experienced case managers serving CD14 to expedite the encampment-to-home process.
• -Support living-wage ordinances which set the wage standard above California’s minimum wage laws- to cover shelter, cost of living, and access to recreation.
• -Support the Ending Homelessness Act (H.R.4232), the Housing Crisis Response Act (H.R. 4233), and the Healthy Foundations for Homeless Veterans Act (H.R. 645).
• -Taskforce with LA Sanitation and other stakeholders for non-enforcement-based reform and implementation of the Comprehensive Cleaning and Rapid Engagement (CARE/CARE+) program.
• -Support plans to bring more federal resources to Los Angeles, including Congresswoman Barbara Lee’s initiative to invest over $1 trillion in a National Affordable Housing Trust Fund to build millions of affordable units and provide rent relief.
• -Support a statewide plan that includes creating a congressional housing committee, subsidizing starter home construction, and expanding Section 8 vouchers.

Policy Action Plan Resources & References:

The Los Angeles Community Action Network https://cangress.org/
Coalition for the Homeless https://www.coalitionforthehomeless.org/proven-solutions/#:~:text=Proven%20housing%2Dbased%20policies%20include,the%20family's%20income%20over%20time.
Social Justice Partners LA https://www.sjpla.org/team-and-board1/eric-ares
United Way of Greater Los Angeles https://unitedwayla.org/?gad_source=1&gclid=Cj0KCQjw3ZayBhDRARIsAPWzx8oSKXSouR0q0DoaV6ipxA8cIqxorECBHZ5FezcePyIvMAeZhqP1ut8aAg4IEALw_wcB
All-In Cities policy toolkit https://allincities.org/toolkit
Reducing Poverty Without Community Displacement https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Indicators-of-inclusive-prosperity_final2.pdf
Legislation of Interest to the National Alliance to End Homelessness https://endhomelessness.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/July2023_LegislativePriorities.pdf
Mayor Karen Bass: Inside Safe Effort launched in southern LA https://mayor.lacity.gov/news/inside-safe-effort-launched-south-los-angeles
Nithya Raman CD4 homelessness initiative https://cd4.lacity.gov/initiative/homelessness/
LA Times’ guide to Cal Senate candidates’ views of housing and homelessness https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2024-02-27/2024-california-election-porter-schiff-lee-garvey-senate-housing-homelessness