Westside Officials Tackle Housing the Homeless

By Gene Williams
Staff Writer

August 25 -- Key Westside officials explored new sites and strategies to house and care for the area’s chronically homeless during a meeting in Santa Monica Wednesday afternoon.

The subcommittee of the Westside Cities Council of Governments -- composed of a dozen elected officials and staff -- reviewed a proposal to house homeless veterans at the Veteran’s Administration (VA) site in Westwood and a plan to make housing a priority for the chronically homeless.

The proposal for the VA site would enhance services and establish housing for 300 to 500 homeless vets in three buildings totaling nearly 150,000 square feet on the North campus of the Westwood site.

The coalition of governments -- consisting of Beverly Hills, Culver City, Los Angeles, West Hollywood and Santa Monica -- has long been eyeing property at the VA as a possible site for regional homeless housing and services.

Under the plan, experienced organizations will competitively bid for space at the site and finance development and operations. Some possible sources of revenue are Federal low-income tax credits and public and private grants.

The proposal -- hatched by service providers including New Directions and the Salvation Army with the support of Council member Bobby Shriver and the City of Santa Monica -- comes as the VA is looking at all it sites across the nation to determine the best future use of its resources.

“It’s a national process that’s going on now, and West L.A. is just a part of it,” explained Assistant to the City Manager Mona Miyasato, who said the goal of the plan is to provide “long term therapeutic housing” for vets with priority given to the chronically homeless.

It is estimated that of the 90,000 homeless in greater Los Angeles, some 19 percent, or 17,800 are vets, according to studies by the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA) and the VA.

The subcommittee also looked at “Housing First” programs that have been successful in other cities at getting the chronically homeless off the streets and unburdening services.

In these programs, about a third of a client’s income goes to paying the rent while the City or other government agencies pick up the rest of the tab.

Unlike the “continuum of care” largely practiced now in Santa Monica, “Housing First” puts people into long-term housing with relatively few strings attached.

In “Housing First” programs, sobriety, getting off drugs and psychiatric treatment is not a precondition to receiving housing. This does not mean that drug use or inappropriate behavior is condoned, but that the consequences usually do not include eviction.

These programs strive to meet homeless people “where they’re at,” explained Santa Monica Human Services Administrator Stacy Rowe.

“Continuum of care works great for a percentage of the population, but not for the chronically homeless,” Rowe said.

In San Francisco, some 400 homeless persons have been housed under such a program since 1998. Sixty-six per cent remain housed after two years. Residents have a 58 per cent reduction in emergency room visits and a 57 per cent reduction in inpatient hospital bed use.

A similar program in New York estimates it costs $22,500 to keep someone in a “Housing First” apartment for a year compared to $27,000 for a cot in a shelter, $85,000 for a bed in jail or $175,000 for a bed in a State hospital.

During the discussion, Shriver continually called for the need for “someone to go into the hospitals to get an accurate accounting” of what the real costs of hospitalizing the homeless over housing them are.

But unfortunately, Shriver said, the complexities and variety of ways the different hospitals keep their books will make that information hard to get.

“A giant part of that equation (the cost effectiveness of “Housing First”) is the hospitals, and that part is largely unknown,” Shriver said.

Shrivier added that he has met with hospital administrators.

“Having talked to enough of them who are spending $6,0000 per day on a (homeless) patient, I have a feeling that when they see the $22,000 per year (for someone in “Housing First”), suddenly a lot more money will turn up” to support such a program, he said.

After the meeting, Bloom said, “We’re all here with a single purpose and everybody, within a certain range, are all on the same page.

“We’ve had a lot of success in this ( homeless issues) and now we have a lot of new ideas that are moving forward rather quickly.”

Also attending the meeting were representatives for L.A. City Council member Bill Rosendahl, County Supervisor Zev Yaraslovsky and Congressman Henry Waxman.