Chronic Homelessness Initiative Evaluation
Countywide Prioritization Systems
During 2018, the homeless service system continued to enhance its alignment around the Coordinated Entry System (CES). Public agencies, including Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA) and the County Department of Health Services (DHS), and community stakeholders, including Enterprise Community Partners and the United Way of Greater Los Angeles’s Home For Good initiative, brought homeless service providers, funders, and community partners together to foster the shared understanding, knowledge, and language needed to fully implement a coordinated system of care. The CES Policy Council and the CES Policy Development Workgroup continued to design principles and policies to refine the implementation of CES. New tools and data dashboards were created to report key metrics on the community’s progress on placing people experiencing homelessness into permanent housing, including PSH. However, the data provided by these dashboards does not include the information needed to detemine which PSH placements are for people with chronic patterns of homelessness.
Building and sustaining capacity continues to be the central challenge to implementing a robust CES. Public agencies and homeless service providers face capacity challenges related to staffing recruitment and retention, space, techonology, infrastructure, and funding. In 2018, LAHSA, the Home For Good Funders Collaborative, and philanthropic partners responded by supporting capacity-building efforts, offering training, technical assistance, recruitment services, and flexible funding.
2018 Countywide Prioritization Systems Progress
Goal: Place chronically homeless individuals in Permanent Supportive Housing (PSH) through the countywide prioritization system at the rate needed to meet community goals.2018 Status: Placements into PSH and other Permanent Housing (PH) increased for the overall population. During 2018, LAHSA started to collect data on housing placements from the County’s Health Agency, local housing authorities, and other partners. Some of the data from external partners do not come with critical information such as household type or other demographic information. Therefore, LAHSA is unable to report whether the surge in PSH placements is made up of predominately of single individuals, of chronically homeless people, or of veterans.
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NEEDS ATTENTIONPrioritization Approaches
(click here)Provider Capacity
(click here)2017 Countywide Prioritization Systems Progress
During 2017, LAHSA and community partners expanded the funding for continued development of the Coordinated Entry System (CES). However, the community faced significant changes with implementing the CES: Fiscal and operational responsibility for the CES for Single Adults transitioned from the Home For Good team at the United Way to LAHSA at the end 2016, and alignment around system policies and provider implementation was still in flux during 2017. Proposition HHH and Measure H funding had been committed, and DHS, DMH, SAPC, and LAHSA worked together throughout 2017 to develop a functional, comprehensive service pipeline for new PSH clients, but housing and services resources were not yet being seen on the ground. This led to significant bottlenecks following the VI-SPDAT assessment stage. At the same time, the CES client data needed to sustain clear and transparent protocols were transitioning to a new HMIS data system.
In 2017, as captured in the LAHSA’s HMIS, placements into permanent housing remain steady for the overall population but declined for some sub-populations, such as people experiencing chronic homelessness. Permanent housing placements are defined as project entries into HMIS-participating PSH, participants in HMIS-participating rapid rehousing who move in to a permanent unit with rental assistance, plus any other exits to permanent destinations from any program type. Permanent housing placements for people who experience chronic homelessness decreased from 2,683 in 2016 to 2,109 in 2017. Project entries into HMIS-participating PSH, a subset of permanent housing placements, also dropped by roughly 12 percent for people experiencing chronic homelessness from 2016 to 2017.
An important note to recognize is that in 2016 and 2017, permanent housing placement data is not aggregated from other community programs entering clients into permanent housing or PSH into HMIS. Data from any non-HMIS participating project funded by the VA Supportive Housing (VASH) program, DHS’s Flexible Housing Subsidy Pool, or the local housing authorities are not included in these totals. However, as the new HMIS system continues to ramp up in 2018, LAHSA and community agencies are working together to aggregate all data for clients who enter the homeless service system and are placed in permanent housing in HMIS.
For more information about the activities that occurred in 2017, visit the 2018 Annual Report.
2016 Countywide Prioritization Systems Progress
Over the past several years the community has made significant investments in developing a countywide prioritization approach, as well as enhancing and supporting coordination at the regional and SPA levels to fully implement the approach. Resources from the Funders Collaborative, LAHSA, and the Foundation have supported dedicated staff positions to oversee coordination overall and within and across-SPA outreach teams and housing location and matching efforts. However, between the growing pains of the expansion process and the limits of the strained housing market in Los Angeles, people are not able to be placed as quickly as needed to reduce the count of people experiencing chronic homelessness. For those clients who do get housed, providers report that they struggle to provide appropriately intensive services to their increasingly vulnerable and chronically homeless client population, particularly when people move away from their SPA of origin to access more affordable housing.
For more information about the activities that occurred in 2016, visit the 2017 Annual Report.
