Community-Created Security with Unhoused Neighbors

Community safety

Pilot or new project, program, or initiative (testing or implementing a new idea)

NoHo Home Alliance’s guests, staff, and homeless system partners have identified a critical lack of trauma-informed security services for LA County's direct service spaces. Existing security contractors are simply not effective at creating safety; personnel are trained to respond to incidents by documenting and recording the incident and calling in law enforcement as physical deterrents. This does nothing to build safety for anyone involved, and often causes more harm than good. People experiencing unsheltered homelessness experience 10 times the number of police engagements, perpetuating the homelessness-jail cycle. Increased engagement with law enforcement is a step backwards in a person’s path towards housing stabilization.
In parallel, many people living on the streets seek pathways to stable income, but face stagnated wages, stigma, and a challenging hiring market. Trauma-informed employment is hard to find and difficult to retain but is a vital step to achieve housing security.

NoHo Home knows that it is possible to create psychological and physical safety for the people we serve through de-escalation tactics that minimize violence and law enforcement involvement. With LA 2050 funding, NoHo Home will develop a Community-Created Security Curriculum that establishes a pipeline of employment for unhoused neighbors through our unique model of care-first trauma-informed security services. By developing a blueprint for developing Security Teams made up of the people we serve, we empower the expertise and experience of our unhoused neighbors and prioritize the dignity of our unhoused guests to keep everyone safe.
Two years ago, NoHo Home took the first formal step towards piloting this program by hiring a recipient of our services to serve as Security Manager for our Access Center. In this time, he has worked with our staff to create Community Guidelines, incident reporting systems, and communication protocols. Our team and guests note a significant decrease in the number of violent incidents at our site, and an increase in tranquility and safety at our Access Center.
NoHo Home seeks to operationalize and expand this program, creating a pipeline for individuals who can be trained and become employed in our program and beyond. The Curriculum will include a Job Training Manual, Safety Procedure Handbook, De-Escalation Training for all staff and volunteers, trauma-informed Human Resource practices, and a Template Toolkit for successful operation on any site.

LA 2050’s support will bring our Community-Created Security Program for unhoused neighbors to scale. The developed Curriculum will guide Teams and Organizations towards replicable pathways to employment for unhoused individuals while creating community-led Security Teams across LA County. By project end, the Community-Created Security Program will: 1) provide community-based security for Los Angeles organizations and events, and 2) train partner organizations to create in-house security systems which provide highest-quality security services without sacrificing the autonomy or dignity of any member of the community.
Our model is unique, but it need not be standalone. We are eager to work with partner organizations to share our community-designed protocols, staff and volunteer trainings, and emergency planning mechanisms. With LA 2050 support, NoHo Home will create a security model in Los Angeles that truly builds safety, especially for programs serving people experiencing homelessness.

Measuring success for this pilot phase is two-pronged:
1. We seek to build capacity for meaningful trauma-informed employment for unhoused individuals. In line with initiatives such as Recovery-Ready Workplace programs, we will develop HR policies and Training Guidebooks which equip a workplace to be radically welcoming and accessible for unhoused individuals.
2. We seek to prove our model works. We measure via percentages of returning guests, safety surveys to measure individual perceptions of safety, and incident documentation and analysis.
At the end of the Pilot Phase, NoHo Home will have achieved the following goals: Creation of a Job Training Manual, Safety Procedure Handbook, De-Escalation Training for all staff and volunteers, trauma-informed Human Resource practices document, and a Template Toolkit for successful operation on any site.
Qualitative and quantitative evidence that our Program model reduces violent incidents and increases feelings of safety by at least 60.