Finding Home- Housing & Mental Health

Housing and Homelessness

Expand existing project, program, or initiative

The Alcott Center has been on the forefront of community mental health services since 1979, meeting the needs of community members who have little to no income and would not otherwise have access to the care they require. In addition to therapy, case and medication management, crisis interventions, trauma-informed studio art classes, Alcott also provides supportive housing for people navigating mental health challenges. The Alcott Center for Mental Health Services recognizes that mental health is multi-faceted and that housing plays an immense role in an individual's mental health. For that reason, Alcott launched and continues to expand supportive housing projects and utilizes trauma-informed property management to help community members maintain housing. Alcott provides transitional and permanent housing throughout LA for community members who are navigating mental health challenges and/or justice-involved reintegration.

COVID continues to have an extreme impact on mental health & housing in our communities. COVID exacerbated the need for mental health & housing services in addition to changing the service landscape for providers. Alcott rapidly expanded services during COVID through adding an additional bridge home, a Project Homekey site & providing telehealth services. We plan on continuing to expand services to meet the immense need our communities face & the support of LA2050 would enable us to do so. Over the next year, Alcott will, provide in-house, substance use treatment to 100 men residing in our bridge homes; we will add an additional 35-bed bridge home for individuals navigating mental health challenges and justice-involved reentry; we will transition one of our current bridge homes to serve clients with more acute needs for longer periods of time, & we will begin providing ECM services within our case management programs to over 300 individuals. With the additional programming Alcott will be providing, we will be adding at least an additional 30 staff members and anticipate serving over 1,600 community members compared to the 400 community members being served only 4 years ago. The expansion of Alcott’s services is playing a role in finding innovative solutions to the complex issues that are mental health & housing. Alcott’s programs are creating a generational impact that is helping to stabilize housing & mental health for hundreds of community members.

The Alcott Center envisions a world free of stigma, full of hope, where all have equal access to care and to resources. This project will have a dramatic impact on that vision by providing accessible wrap-around services for community members who are often disenfranchised due to the various challenges they are facing. By continuing to develop a trauma-informed property management model, best practices in providing mental health services to low-income community members who oftentimes don’t have health insurance and establishing innovative programming to serve community members navigating justice-involved re-entry and mental health challenges. If this project is successful, it will help to inform meeting further community needs for those who are housing insecure and navigating mental health challenges.

The most important outcomes of Alcott's programs are the number of clients who are provided mental health & housing services, as well as, the retention rate of clients staying permanently housed, the retention rate of clients avoiding incarceration, the percentage of residents who are moving from temporary housing to permanent housing and the attendance rate for therapy appointments. At least 90% of clients who have been permanently housed will continue to be permanently housed over the course of a year with the continuous development of our innovative trauma-informed property management. Over 80% of Alcott clients being assisted with housing services will be moved from temporary to permanent housing over the course of a year. Lastly, over 85% of clients being supported with justice-involved re-entry services will not return to incarceration. Alcott will provide mental health services to over 650 community members & housing services to over 950 community members over the grant period.