PARTNERING TO FIND PERMANENT HOUSING

In 2020, only 15% of unhoused Angelenos moved on to permanent housing after leaving Bridge Home shelters. Our office’s Volunteer Corps is teaming up with People Assisting The Homeless (PATH) on a vital program called LeaseUp to help — and we invite you to join our efforts!

LA doesn’t have nearly enough permanent supportive housing to match the scale of our homelessness crisis, so we often use vouchers to assist unhoused people in renting apartments on the open market. The problem is, there’s not enough landlords willing to accept them. 

LeaseUp was piloted by PATH in 2018 to provide incentives and safeguards -- like bonus payments, holding fees, damage insurance, and 24/7 housing support -- to landlords willing to enroll in the program and be a part of the solution. It’s been a success, but it needs our help to grow.

Because of the large volume of Project Roomkey and other interim housing sites added recently in LA, LeaseUp needs more landlords to ensure that unhoused residents find permanent housing solutions

Our Volunteer Corps is partnering with PATH to support that effort. We’ll be hosting virtual sessions in the coming weeks to gather landlord contact information and make calls to spread the word about LeaseUp.

To join us, you can sign up here: bit.ly/cd4leaseup

CD4 SPOTLIGHT: HOLLYWOOD FOOD COALITION

We had a great time getting to help out with Hollywood Food Coalition’s nightly dinner! Hot meals offered to unhoused and food-insecure neighbors every night of the year is an incredible example of how consistency and care establish trust and a chance to provide other essential services.

Hollywood Food Coalition updates their services based on the season and the specific needs of the community — ranging from mobile health services to items like tents and shoes. A major way you can support Hollywood Food Co is to help supply these items by donating to their wishlist.

Just as important, Hollywood Food Coalition’s year-round operations — including their nightly dinner and Community Exchange — rely on the energy of community volunteers. You can sign up and lend a helping hand here.

IMPROVING THE CITY'S APPROACH TO OUTREACH

This week, Council took important action shaping how homeless outreach is performed in our city by passing a motion our office introduced alongside Councilmembers Paul Krekorian, Curren Price, Jr., and Mark Ridley-Thomas. 

The motion develops a citywide framework on how its existing outreach teams and new outreach teams will coordinate to ensure a person experiencing homelessness has the best chance of a successful housing placement, including consistency and frequency in visits from outreach workers, a structure for more direct coordination with Council offices, and adequate consideration for how to transfer unhoused neighbors’ belongings into new housing.

FIGHTING FOR STRONGER TENANT PROTECTIONS

Next week, City Council is considering a new Tenant Anti-Harassment Law in the Housing Committee. Longtime tenants of rent-stabilized apartments are often targeted by landlords hoping to get them to move out and thereby be able to raise rents to market rate. It’s a big problem that contributes to gentrification and homelessness in our city, and the law represents an important step in the right direction.

But like all laws, it's the details of how they are written that will determine whether they are actually effective in addressing the problem, and there are several opportunities for this ordinance to be a lot stronger. Overall, we're proposing twelve amendments to make sure the law is successful in serving the vulnerable tenants it is intended to protect, and we've included them in a public comment in the council file.

We’ll be talking a lot next week about this new ordinance -- specifically, why we need it and how we can make it stronger -- and we hope you’ll tune in to the meeting on Wednesday at 3 pm to listen or offer public comment on this vital issue.