LAHSA State of Homelessness Addresses Pandemic’s Impact

COVID-19 changed everything in Los Angeles — including where homeless people stay, said Heidi Marston, executive director of Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority at its 2021 state of homelessness town hall on March 18.

While you may see more tents and more encampments in places you have not previously seen them, this is not because there are more homeless people, it’s due to guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“This is largely driven by the CDC guidance instructing everybody to shelter in place, people practicing social distancing and encampments popping up where maybe before they weren’t allowed to, because we want to make sure they’re safe, even if they’re experiencing homelessness,” Marston said.

This message from the LA Homeless Services Authority came only a week before the Los Angeles Police Department forced homeless people living in Echo Park to leave. Housing advocates convinced some of the park’s residents to seek temporary shelter in hotel rooms as part of Project Roomkey. However, the police were not so gentle, and violently clashed with protesters in the process of removing the park’s residents. 

LAHSA’s main focus is housing — both interim and permanent. In 2019, LAHSA increased the number of people sheltered in interim housing by about 25%. This was largely because of new programs like Bridge Home shelters.When COVID-19 struck, LAHSA sheltered more than 10,000 people within three months.

However, because of the pandemic, LAHSA lost about 50% of overall capacity in its shelters because of social distancing guidelines.

“Where there used to be 100 beds in a shelter, we might now only have 50,” Marston said. “For every bed we’re bringing online, we’re losing some as well.”

In addition, it takes a little longer to fill beds, because first the people must be tested for COVID-19 and quarantined.

Despite the challenges, 27,325 people enrolled in LAHSA shelters in 2020, a 5% increase over 2019.

LAHSA housed 20,690 in permanent housing in 2020, an 11% decrease from the previous year. This was because it focused more on providing temporary housing to shield people from the pandemic.

“All of our resources, our energy and our effort went to this life-saving mission of getting hotels and motels online and bringing people inside the shelter,” Marston said.

Temporary housing is actually more expensive than permanent housing and is meant to be a step towards permanent housing, Marston said.

“Permanent housing is what we all know ends homelessness,” Marston said. “It’s the most important part of our system. Once someone is stabilized in housing, they can start to recover in every other aspect of their life.”

LAHSA has helped about 64,500 find housing over the last three years. Based on the 2020 homeless count, there are about 66,000 homeless people in Los Angeles County. Unfortunately, as people become housed, even more lose their housing.

“It’s hard to reconcile that we’re ending homelessness for more people than ever compared to what we see on the streets every day,” Marston said. “The challenge is really, really specific to prevention — that on average, every single day we house 207 people. Two hundred seven people make their way back into housing. But at the same time, 227 people are pushed into homelessness every single day.”

Marston said that regions that have successfully reduced homelessness have invested in three areas: prevention, rehousing and building affordable housing.

“First, you need to stop people from becoming homeless,” Marston said. “Second, when people do become homeless, you need to rehouse them as quickly as possible. And third, you need to build housing so that the supply meets the demand.”

Marston said that Los Angeles has invested heavily in rehousing people — but not enough in prevention or in creation of housing.

She said that several things have led to LA’s homeless crisis.

One is the stagnation of income as housing prices rose. In LA County, renters need to earn $41.96 per hour just to afford the average rent, which is $2,100 per month. The minimum wage is $15 per hour.

Another is the ceasing of investment in affordable housing and mental health infrastructure. In 2011, state redevelopment funding was eliminated entirely, when it was given more than $1 billion every year beforehand. In 2011, California also ended the institutionalization of people for mental health care with the intent to replace it with something else — which never materialized.

“We allowed tenant protections and land use tools to be undermined, and to discriminate by race in redlining,” Marston said. “We built out a system of mass incarceration and punitive criminal justice systems that have become huge drivers of homelessness, disproportionately affecting Black Angelenos.”

Marston said that more must be done to prevent homelessness, and to eliminate it entirely.

“It’s so critical that we’re grounded in the facts about what’s working and where change is needed, so we can move forward together in ways that will really address the root causes of our region’s homelessness,” Marston said. “We need to build momentum, we need to build more housing, we need to continue with vaccines and make sure that people maintain their safety.”