LOS ANGELES — Los Angeles County’s homeless services system, expanded and enhanced by Measure H and other investments, helped 72,815 people exit homelessness into permanent housing and placed 85,734 people into interim housing over a span of four years, according to a recently released independent report by Public Sector Analytics.
The report directly attributed 42 percent of those permanent housing placements and 60 percent of those interim housing placements to strategies developed and overseen by the LA County Homeless Initiative and funded in whole or in part by Measure H, a quarter-cent sales tax dedicated to preventing and combating homelessness.
Created by the Board of Supervisors in August 2015, the Homeless Initiative announced its initial set of strategies in February 2016, initially funded by a one-time allocation of $100 million. Voters approved Measure H about a year later, in March 2017, though its projected $355-million annual revenue stream did not start until October 2017. The Homeless Initiative includes many LA County departments, city governments, nonprofit homeless service providers and other partners who work together to implement strategies with Measure H funding.
The Public Sector Analytics report is an annual performance evaluation of the Homeless Initiative, authored by Professors Halil Toros, Dennis Culhane and Stephen Metraux. Data from the first year of their study predated the passage of Measure H. The fourth year did not include data beyond the 2019-2020 Fiscal Year that ended in June 2020, and so, the report covers only the first few months of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The report noted that annual Homeless Initiative permanent housing placements have increased by roughly 115 percent, from 4,583 in the first year to 9,857 in the fourth year. Meanwhile, the 14,804 Homeless Initiative interim housing placements recorded in the fourth year represent a 90 percent increase from the first year.
When accounting for the impact of Measure H, the report tallied a cumulative total of 25,050 Measure H-funded permanent housing placements over the three-year period since the revenue stream began, accounting for 44.5 percent of total permanent housing placements across the system during that period. Meanwhile, it tallied 46,407 Measure H-funded interim housing placements, or 66 percent of the total since the revenue stream began.
Despite the gains made by the homeless services system, LA County still has a shortage of 517,000 affordable housing units and more than 550,000 severely rent-burdened households who spend more than half of their income on housing, partly because wages have not kept pace with rents. A worker needs to earn $41.96 per hour — almost triple the minimum wage in the City of Los Angeles — to afford the average monthly asking rent of $2,182. Systemic racism and the economic conditions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic pose additional challenges.
Still, the report said the “Homeless Initiative continues to show progress in the placement of people experiencing homelessness in permanent housing” and welcomed the expected opening of thousands of permanent supportive housing units over the next few years.
Details: LA County’s Homeless Initiative Annual Performance Evaluation – Year Four Outcomes