A Continuum of Support for Angeleno Families Faced with - or Experiencing - Homelessness

Housing and Homelessness

San Fernando Valley

Expand existing project, program, or initiative

We address family homelessness. In 2022, 11,013 families (20,530 individuals) experienced homelessness in L.A. (LAHSA). Family homelessness is impactful on parents; consider the lack of stability, safety and inordinate accompanying traumas. When parents experiencing homelessness are asked "what is most impactful about your situation?" the answer is that their ability to provide for and protect their children is put into question. Children who experience family homelessness are 5x more likely to experience it as adults (Nat'l Alliance to End Homelessness). The experience of homelessness is traumatic for anyone, but for children, social/emotional development, academic progress, and ability to develop organic, healthy coping mechanisms are badly diminished. Addressing family homelessness is a crucial step in making L.A. an equitable, healthy place for families in 2050. It demonstrates an understanding of the problem now and prevents slides into poverty & homelessness in the future.

We serve families in three ways: 1) We provide financial assistance and access to capacity-building supportive services for families faced with imminent homelessness; 2) We provide access to shelter, capacity-building supportive services, and tracks to permanent housing programs for families currently experiencing homelessness; and 3) in April '24, 8 apartment-like units in a new, dignifying building with capacity for up to 32 individuals in families experiencing homelessness. Shelters are not good places for children. These units are small apartments - where children can put their drawings on the fridge, do homework at the kitchen table, where parents can tuck them into bed. It doesn't lessen the intensity of the work parents are doing to increase their capacity and access safe/stable housing that is TRULY theirs, but it provides dignity, and it provides a safe space for that work to occur. While families live in the units -approximately 4-month stays for each family - children go to school, parents go to work if employed, and families work with a case manager to access resources that provide longevity - mental health services for them and/or their children, continuing education/employment work that increases earning capacity, benefits enrollment and other personal administrative work that can often serve as barriers. Anything that can be done to lessen the chance that their family will be homeless again is done, including their enrollment in permanent housing programs.

We will consider our programming for families a short-term success if we serve 29 families (approximately 114 individuals) with either rental assistance to avoid homelessness, supportive services & linkages to permanent housing while staying in shelter, or supportive services & linkages to permanent housing while sheltered in our new apartment building for families. In any format, L.A. County is made better because 29 families will not be on the street, their capacity to earn & sustain will be increased, mental health & medical needs will be met, and their children will be supported to thrive academically, developmentally, and socially. In the long term, it is successful if our community considers family supports and services as a meaningful upstream intervention to prevent chronic homelessness in the future. In the long term, we want families to have the capacity to organically serve as their own system of supports and resource coordination that prevents entries to homelessness.

BTH measures its impact through a results-based accountability lens. Through quantitative data collection that is a crucial aspect to the organization's larger work in the L.A. Continuum of Care (the Homeless Management Information System database is populated by data that inform the Coordinated Entry System that ensures that there is no wrong door for a person to access resources) that includes demographic data, specific services accessed, the outcomes of those services, new benefits accessed, and new income realized, etc. and the qualitative data resulting from a meaningful therapeutic relationship (i.e., goals for the family, addressing traumas that serve as barriers to ongoing success), we are able to determine whether we are doing what we say we will do for families in Los Angeles.