Recently, Los Angeles Homeless Services (LAHSA) released the results of the Annual Point-In-Time (PIT) Count with the area reporting a significant increase in homelessness. National headlines read, “Staggering homeless count stuns LA officials.” According to the Greater Los Angeles Homeless Count Summary and Key Messages:
Since last year’s Point-in-Time Count, LA County saw a rise in homelessness of 12% to 58,936. The City of Los Angeles saw a 16% rise to 36,300.
Chronically homeless went up +17%. Non-chronic single adults are the least-resourced population, and many timed into chronic status, meaning they have now been homeless for more than a year and people in vehicles rose 5%. These often indicate first-time homelessness.
The PIT Count is a yearly HUD mandated function of a Continuum of Care (COC). In addition, CoC’s are required to submit System Performance Measures (SPM) on an annual basis. The intent of these selection criteria are to encourage CoCs, in coordination with ESG Program recipients and all other homeless assistance stakeholders in the community, to regularly measure their progress in meeting the needs of people experiencing homelessness in their community and to report this progress to HUD.
One SPM is “the length of time individuals and families remain homeless. The SPM results use records from shelter, transitional housing and safe haven stays recorded in each CoC’s homeless management information system (HMIS). When reviewing SPM submitted by the LA CoC in FY18 in measuring length of time persons remain homeless in the system, it is alarming to see that from FY16 to FY17, the length of time increased from 139 to 388, compared to a national average of 151 days.
The Los Angeles CoC was awarded $123,707,061 from HUD in the FY18 CoC Competition. During the competition, HUD allocated nearly $2 billion to renew more than 5,800 local homeless housing and service programs across the U.S. and its territories. These Continuum of Care (CoC) grants will help end homelessness and provide critically needed support to local programs on the front lines of serving individuals and families experiencing homelessness.
With the FY19 CoC Competition to be announced any day, Los Angeles, like many CoCs struggling to end and prevent homelessness, will need to present a case for support to HUD in how to overcome challenging obstacles for homeless and housing service programs that receive millions in funding each year. The biggest obstacles to resolve, as stated in the Greater Los Angeles Homeless Count Summary and Key Messages are:
Our housing and economic crisis pushes people into homelessness faster than our system can help them out. LA County has a tremendous shortage of affordable housing units, and rents are rising faster for low-income renters and far faster than wages—median household income decreased 3% between 2000 and 2017. A renter would need to earn $47.52 per hour to afford the median monthly asking rent. More than 2 million county residents pay more than 50% of their monthly income on housing.
A legacy of racial discrimination. Black people continue to be overrepresented at 33% of the homeless population in LA County, but only 9% of the general population. A report issued earlier this year recommends policy efforts to provide fair access to housing and employment, expand re-entry support, and close the racial housing gap to address this inequity.
The solution involves every person and every system, and the problem will not resolve without cross-sector collaboration and agreement by members of the community that everyone is responsible for ending and preventing homelessness. In fact, the pervasive suffering of persons struggling with homelessness in our communities is impossible to ignore or disassociate, no matter where one resides. Everyone must join the discussion and bring solutions to the forefront in helping our neighbors.
Comments