Mayor’s Fund For L.A. Launches New Homelessness Prevention Partnership with U.S.VETS

LOS ANGELES – Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass April 9 joined the mayor’s fund for Los Angeles and U.S.VETS to announce a partnership that will help prevent veterans from falling into homelessness when there are resources available to help them. The mayor also discussed an upcoming advocacy trip to Washington, DC, where she and the U.S. Conference of Mayors or USCM task force on homelessness will lead a bipartisan group of more than 40 mayors from across the country to meet with members of the Biden Administration, the U.S. Senate, and the U.S. House of Representatives to advance federal policy to help bring unhoused veterans inside and to keep low-income veterans from falling into homelessness. 

As Chair of USCM’s task force on homelessness, Mayor Bass is leading an advocacy trip at the end of April to help bring unhoused veterans inside and to keep low-income veterans from falling into homelessness. Mayors joining the trip include USCM President Reno (NV) Mayor Hillary Schieve, USCM Second Vice President Oklahoma City (OK) Mayor David Holt and Chair of USCM’s Community Development and Housing Committee Toledo (OH) Mayor Wade Kapszukiewicz. The mayors will push for securing additional housing vouchers, increasing project-based voucher flexibility to build more permanent and supportive housing and expanding eligibility of housing vouchers to ensure our unhoused veterans are not left behind due to receiving disability income benefits.

U.S.VETS offers many resources to ensure veterans never find themselves without shelter, including emergency, transitional, and permanent housing. Services provided by U.S.VETS at Patriotic Hall include: 

• Full Career and Employment Counseling
• Full support for women veterans by women veterans, including case management, mental health counseling, access to childcare, housing assistance, connection to the Department of Military and Veteran Affairs for benefit assistance
• Support for veterans on community college campuses, including mental health
• Access to federal funding for veterans and their families in danger of becoming homeless
• Case management support for newly housed veterans to support housing permanence
• Access to federal funding for homeless veterans
• Legal advocacy

Services available at the U.S.VETS office in Inglewood will also be available to Angelenos referred by the mayor’s fund, which created We Are LA to help connect Angelenos in danger of becoming homeless to every resource available to them – public and private. They send outreach workers to knock on the doors of people who have been served eviction notices, provide casework to connect at-risk Angelenos to resources, host tenant resource clinics and operate a hotline for anyone struggling to pay rent. 

Details: www.mayorsfundla.org.; We Are LA hotline:213-584-1808.