A New Approach to Transform Homelessness

Affordable housing and homelessness

Expand existing project, program, or initiative (expanding and continuing ongoing, successful work)

The 2023 Greater Los Angeles Homeless Count results showed a 9% rise in homelessness on any given night in Los Angeles County to an estimated 75,518 people and a 10% rise in the City of Los Angeles to an estimated 46,260 people. While the number of unhoused people in interim housing held steady at 20,363, the rise in the number of people experiencing unsheltered homelessness coincided with the overall increase.
“The homeless count results tell us what we already know — that we have a crisis on our streets, and it’s getting worse,” said Dr. Va Lecia Adams Kellum, Chief Executive Officer of the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA). “The important thing to take away from today is that for the first time, the city, county, and LAHSA are moving with urgency to house the people living on our streets.” Hope the Mission is a strong partner with each of these entities with a proven and successful track record of accomplishment.

Using the recently passed Affordable Housing on Faith Lands Act, Hope the Mission is partnering with the Valley Presbyterian Church of North Hills to build a 22-unit permanent housing site using the newly designed Boxabl homes for seniors, the fasting growing segment among the homeless in LA County. This is also a pilot program to help dramatically transform the homeless crisis. Unlike many transitional shelters, this is permanent supportive housing. Each Boxabl housing unit is 400 sq. ft. and comes fully equipped with a bathroom, kitchen, bedroom and living area. Amazingly, these homes can be assembled in one day.
Residents would pay rent on a sliding scale and if the person has no income, we will work with each resident to help them qualify for a housing voucher and subsidy. Hope the Mission staff will work with each resident to make sure they are qualified for any public benefit and assist them with our wrap around services.
This innovative approach will quickly provide affordable housing in LA County and at a fraction of the cost that is currently being paid. The budget for this new shelter is $3,168,000. We already have nearly $2.5 million raised in pledges from private donors. We are appealing to other donors and foundations to complete the funding.
The Boxabl home model was approved by the state of California in May and we are hoping to break ground in August if all goes according to plan with completion by the end of the year.

The new Affordable Housing on Faith Lands Act empowers California’s churches, faith-based organizations, and non-profit colleges that have land that is largely unused to work with homeless providers by streamlining the permitting process and overriding local zoning restrictions. This opens tremendous opportunities for your Affordable Housing and Homeless initiative. Hope the Mission also plans to use Boxabl, pre-fabricated homes, a new initiative in California. Each Boxabl housing unit is 400 sq. ft. and comes equipped with a full bathroom, kitchen, bedroom and living area and they can be assembled in one day. The City of LA just opened the Weingart Center at $600,000 per unit. Boxable homes will cost $140,000 for everything.
With more land available and a huge savings in time and money, this new approach could revolutionize how LA helps solve the homeless crises. Your grant of $75,000 could be part of something truly extraordinary!

This is an early-stage project that we expect to launch this year. If successful as we expect, this innovative approach has the potential to reach tens of thousands of homeless citizens much faster while dramatically less expensive. To measure our imapct, Hope the Mission utilizes the Homeless Management Information System and internal excel spreadsheets to track programmatic data. Our Director of Access and Engagement, Director of Residential Programs, and Director of Crises and Interim Housing track the metrics from each individual department. Our program's leadership team submit monthly data reports to the Director of Strategic Initiatives who tracks and analyzes agency-wide programmatic data to assess for program strengths, areas of improvement, and compliance with our funding source requirements.