Giving a Boost to Food Boost

Housing and Homelessness

Expand existing project, program, or initiative

Housing Works (HW) provides housing retention services those who have experienced chronic homelessness, severe mental illness and chronic health conditions with a 93% success rate, slamming the revolving door of homelessness for good. We launched Food Boost in 2020 when our frontline workers discovered that our most ill, vulnerable and homebound participants were literally starving in their apartments unable to access food during the pandemic due to transportation barriers, food deserts, illness and mental health crises. We now understand that the people we serve will always have difficulty accessing food-and particularly healthy food delivered with a food justice lens--due to extremely meager incomes, transportation barriers and poor health. They can't afford to order groceries from Instacart and don't have family members to help them out. We are their support system, connection to the world and interface in a world that doesn't know how to engage them with skill and compassion.

Today, HW provides weekly fresh food boxes and healthy served meals to 450 formerly chronically homeless individuals living in scattered-sites and nine affordable housing developments. We partner with the Hollywood Food Coalition to rescue and distribute food to our participants who are concentrated in South and Central Los Angeles. We recently partnered with the Sam Simon Foundation to provide vegan options to our participants in keeping with their health and religious practices. Our frontline workers and Food Boost staff are carefully trained in our best-practice approaches to work with people who have severe, persistent mental illness and trauma. Other food delivery programs aren't equipped to work with our participants and may inadvertently do harm. Over the next 18 months, HW and its housing partners will be opening 12 new Measure H or HHH-funded affordable housing developments with 1,575 units of housing. We estimate that 800-1,000 new individuals will need food assistance and our skilled interface by the end of 2024. HW must build the capacity of its Food Boost program capacity to ensure that our collective investments in housing yield long-term housing retention if we are to seriously address homelessness. In order to prepare for this expansion, HW needs a dedicated food delivery van and program equipment (long foldable tables, pop-up canopies, and hand-trucks) for our weekly distribution events at the developments to be efficient and orderly.

Los Angeles County will be different if the city and county's historic investments in affordable housing yield the desired outcomes: moving people from the streets into permanent housing, helping them to retain that housing, and helping them to remain healthy. Housing Works has the trust of its participants and knows their needs intimately. It has the ability to address their food security issues while understanding their health, mental health and financial realities. The people who deliver the food are trained in our art of human engagement strategies that help people with mental illness feel safe and cared for without further traumatizing or triggering them. Housing Works also has existing relationships with affordable housing developers and contracts to provide on-site services at their developments, including Hollywood Community Housing Corporation, WORKS, RNLA, Many Mansions, Little Tokyo Service Center and more. Food Boost is a welcome service at these developments.

Food Boost is carefully monitored and measured. We know exactly how many meals are delivered each week and who receives them. We track this information in our client management database. The metrics we will track for the program include: 1. The number of people receiving food assistance 2. The number of meals and food boxes delivered 3. Participant satisfaction Program data is collected by Food Boost delivery staff under the supervision of the Director of Programs and maintained in our client information management system. While the need for Food Boost is assessed continuously, for the vast majority of participants receiving assistance the need for supplemental food will continue indefinitely. We are also exploring how to evaluate our new food justice program priority, ensuring that the food we provide is fresh, healthy, nutritious and culturally relevant. We will use participant surveys to collect consumer satisfaction and their suggestions for program improvement.