Published 02/13/2024 | 8:00am PST
Back in 2011, I attended a meeting at Club Nokia (LA Live) hosted by the new United Way and the Downtown LA Chamber Joint Task Force called Home For Good. Their objective was to focus on chronic homelessness and create Permanent Support Housing (PSH).
These organizations spoke of ending chronic homelessness in Los Angeles in 5 years, and they stressed how much more affordable it was to actually house people in PSH, rather than to leave them living on the streets. At that time, they estimated the costs of housing the homeless to be about 42% less than leaving them on the streets.
Their challenge was getting cities to buy into the idea. It required each city in the County to have their share of PSH available (small housing facilities with 6-8 units) in order to house the unhoused in their community while providing supportive services.
These organizations aimed to address the fact that many well-meaning organizations only sought to house, feed and clothe the unhoused, but failed to deal with their mental health, physical health, or career development. Working with the unhoused community in the City of Hollywood, they were successful in bringing organizations together to create pathways not just to housing, food and clothing, but also to long-term mental, physical, and financial health.
These were brilliant ideas, but these were also ideas that relied on the support of communities - and that support was not always there. As time went on, the project had to adapt as city by city refused to allow Skid Row residents to be placed in their city.
Even so, today, this program has raised and aligned more than $62 million in private funding through the Funders Collaborative, leveraging more than $5 billion in public resources while setting new standards for helping people currently living in encampments to successfully transition into stable housing.
During all those discussions with these organizations, I learned that the term ‘homeless’ gets tossed around as a catch-all term for anyone on the streets and rarely refers to families. I also learned the difference between someone who recently lost housing and someone who is “chronically” homeless. In Pomona, we average just over 700 unhoused individuals during our annual counts, but the number neglects the 3,114 children classified as homeless according to the 2023 California Dashboard. When residents and business owners talk about the “homeless” problem, they often only refer to the ones who sleep in front of stores, build fires on street corners, leave trash in alleys and needles in playgrounds, but there are so many more who are dealing with homelessness.
Our local communities must come to understand that part of the challenge of housing the homeless is that we are facing an ever-increasing housing deficit. I personally have worked to help find housing for many families - particularly during the pandemic. I have built a tremendous relationship with Donyielle Holley, City of Pomona Homeless Services Supervisor, and know the very real challenges we face due to limited motel vouchers, long housing waiting lists, and delayed mental health intake. All these challenges are compounded by the fact that our local Hope for Home had to reduce the number of their shelter beds due to COVID protocols, and that there are those who simply refuse to live anywhere else but on the streets.
Everyone’s looking for a solution that is hopefully fast and inexpensive, however most are guilty of throwing the entire homelessness conversation into ‘one large bucket’ - so to speak. In truth, there has to be as many solutions as there are unhoused people. We need to break it down to find sustainable solutions. We need to distinguish programs for recently unhoused families from programs for families who still have housing, but are in danger of being unhoused. We need to prioritize unhoused students and find safe quiet living spaces for them to succeed. We need to take into consideration unhoused Veterans, many with PTSD, severe health challenges, and lack of medicine. We need to realize how it feels for someone with extreme anxiety or paranoia to sleep in a bunk bed in the center of hundreds of other people under a large semi-permanent tent.
I am grateful for Donyielle (CIty of Pomona), Reggie (Volunteers of America), Patty (PUSD Family Services),who do so many others who do everything they possibly can every day to address this overwhelming challenge by seeing, listening, and caring. Mother Teresa once said, “We think sometimes that poverty is only being hungry, naked and homeless. The poverty of being unwanted, unloved and uncared for is the greatest poverty.”
There are so many programs. Some that seem to work, others that don’t. Programs like Pathway Home, which I saw work firsthand recently with 43 unhoused individuals from Holt and San Antonio who were given supportive housing. This program is part of the Los Angeles County’s Homeless Initiative and has funding from Measure H. Other programs like Community Assistance, Recovery, and Empowerment (CARE) Court, which seems like an effective idea, but has yet to prove effective. Jerel Ezell, in an article in Time magazine stated, “Going back to the early 18th Century, American prisons and mental health wards have used coercive or involuntary treatment on their populations, while so-called drug courts, invented in the 1970s, often make enrollment into substance use treatment programs, like methadone, a condition for favorable adjudication terms. CARE Courts are presented as a more compassionate and flexible iteration, yet can still involuntarily retain patients under a variety of open-ended scenarios, while their ultimate value in solving California’s problems is very much open to question.”
We cannot continue to utilize blanket solutions to highly specific challenges. We must address clear milestones and programs for each specific unhoused demographic; asking who are we helping and what are the steps needed to provide sustainable progress. We must implement various paths, whether through rapid re-housing, permanent supportive housing, voucher programs, or homeless prevention, coupled with jobs programs, substance abuse support, and basic needs relief. We cannot just keep trying to move people around from corner to corner without building trust and providing stronger mental health support on the streets, in the shelter, and in the motels, camps, and RV Parks. Lastly, but most importantly, we must do this together. This can’t be a problem that we drop on the City’s understaffed departments, or on underfunded nonprofits.
