Shelter Me App

Housing and Homelessness

County of Los Angeles

Pilot or new project, program, or initiative

Nearly 75% percent of L.A.'s unhoused population is unsheltered. Shelter beds, mostly due to COVID, have increased by 62% percent since 2019, but often people experiencing homelessness choose to stay outdoors. The reasons are multifold: still, there are not enough beds; some shelters are congregant and thus unappealing or thought unsafe. But a prevalent reason is because there is no easy way for people experiencing homelessness - at the moment they most need shelter - to determine what shelters are geographically accessible, have availability, and serve specific populations. Today, an unhoused person or caseworker has to call multiple hotlines and shelter locations to secure a bed. This is inefficient and demoralizing - so people abandon their search. An app with real-time information on shelter availability, by location and population served, would be transformative. More people would enter shelters - making them more likely to seek services and ultimately, permanent housing.

Finding an accessible shelter that meets needs and has availability is incredibly challenging. An unhoused woman with a small child living in Venice is unlikely to seek shelter options in Pasadena or East LA. And with so many shelters configured around populations served, this single mom must also find a shelter that takes families with small children. An adult man is unwilling to leave behind the dog that's his only consistent companion. But the only pet-friendly shelter within a thirty-minute drive isn't picking up the phone. Shelter Me - available to people experiencing homelessness, case managers, outreach workers, and government partners - identifies, in real-time, shelter bed availability. Shelter Me is part of our broader app-based portfolio and involves the creation of an intuitive, user-centric app that utilizes location and criteria search (like AirBnB), and provides consistently updated availability (like OpenTable). This same user-friendly, intuitive interface is lacking in current homeless services apps. Shelter Me will enable people to search availability filtered by key criteria, including populations served, geography, pet friendly policies, communal vs. individual accommodations, curfew policies, and more. To incentivize participation for the shelters themselves, we'll provide better technology to the shelters, free of charge. Shelter Me will move more people into shelter more efficiently, enabling a critical first step towards permanent housing.

A 2022 National Alliance to End Homelessness report concluded that, nationally, 40% of people experiencing homelessness are unsheltered. But across L.A., it's almost double that. The unsheltered are less likely to use government and non-profit services, and more likely to have health issues or be in unsafe situations. Housing is the ultimate stabilizing force, and shelters are the key entry point into permanent housing. Shelter Me can connect people experiencing homelessness - and their case managers - to shelters with open beds. Once in shelter, service leaders can better assess individuals and provide support and solutions, leading to better outcomes. Because L.A. continues to lack sufficient shelter beds, an app like Shelter Me can help assess current shelter utilization and determine where and what kinds of shelters are needed. Put simply: with Shelter Me, we know that more people will move from the streets to shelter to housing, faster, in the short, medium, and long-term.

Our primary measure of effectiveness will be utilization - how many people experiencing homelessness, homeless service providers, outreach workers, and case workers are utilizing Shelter Me to find shelter and, once a shelter is located, how many unhoused individuals actually stay (or attempt to enter) in shelter due to app usage. We will also measure how many shelters participate in the app program. The more shelters that participate, the more we can improve outcomes. Ultimately, after the app is in use for one year and widely adopted across end users, we can track alignment across the process, determining where we need more shelters, what kinds of shelters, and what services must be provided in shelters. We can then better understand outstanding needs and work with partners in government, non-profits, and the private sector to improve or build necessary shelter. The knowledge built through broad utilization of Shelter Me will lead to construction of more shelters people want to use.