DignityNow LA: Mapping the End of Unsheltered Homelessness

Affordable housing and homelessness

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

LA’s struggle with homelessness is significant. With now over 46,000 people in the city experiencing it, homelessness has grown a staggering 80% since 2015. Housing is a major factor. Despite efforts to increase production, there remains a profound housing shortfall in CA and there is no feasible path to build sufficient affordable housing given budget, land, and zoning realities. The challenges are particularly acute in large metro areas like LA, where it currently takes more than $600,000 and 5 years to build one affordable unit. To adequately address this crisis, we need a dynamic set of solutions that include permanent housing, non-congregant interim supportive housing, shelters, and other measures. Most essentially we need a better understanding of the needs across interventions and neighborhoods. We also need to engage LA residents in the process to catalyze public support for an actionable strategic plan following years of political stagnation and rising numbers of unhoused.

Building upon our 2023 LA2050 award, we aim to create a strategic plan to end unsheltered homelessness in LA in the next 3 years. Working with our partner McKinsey & Co., who have been studying LA homelessness, we will perform a full Needs & Assets Assessment to understand the housing resources required to address this issue. Factoring in housing in development and what can be committed to with sufficient funds, we will identify partners to join us in providing specific housing options (shelter, sober-living, ISH, permanent, etc.) and quantify total beds needed. We will also pinpoint funding streams and identify locations for DignityMoves communities, one of the options that will be utilized in this approach. By quantifying a “finish line,” and creating a plan of execution, DignityMoves helps make unsheltered homelessness tangible and solvable. The holistic ‘DignityNow’ approach allows us to circumvent the bureaucratic logjam and donor fatigue of piecemeal interventions to impact change at a much faster rate. We’ve seen success with this strategy already in Santa Barbara. To combat rising resignation, we will conduct community research to garner resident concerns and produce a narrative-focused media campaign to translate our strategy, rebuff existing stereotypes, and build support for efficient execution of our plan. With this holistic approach, at the grant’s end, we will have determined where, how, and with whom to achieve DignityNow LA and will be ready to execute.

This grant will create a defined strategic plan to end unsheltered homelessness in LA, addressing a persistent challenge in the city. With our road map, we can efficiently create a more equitable, safe, and empowered Los Angeles where no one is forced to stay on the streets. Essential to this work is compelling narrative change around the causes and solutions to unsheltered homelessness. As evidenced by this issue receiving the most votes in this competition 3 years in a row, the sense of discouragement in addressing LA’s housing and homelessness issue is palpable. Our vision includes community-led policy research to reinvigorate the dialogue with residents. Armed with these insights, a thoughtful media campaign can build support for our efforts and create public pressure, which in turn will engage policymakers to execute on the strategic plan expediently. Beyond LA, we believe this DignityNow model can be replicated across the state and country, revitalizing this stagnant issue area.

DignityNow LA builds concretely on the work of the organization. With our 2023 grant, we delivered an innovative strategic plan in 6 months, which the Norwalk City Council readily approved. Now we aim to scale these efforts in the larger city of LA, and incorporate a media campaign, having learned that public engagement is critical for successful implementation. In addition to Norwalk, we created and are implementing a county-wide strategic plan to end unsheltered homelessness in Santa Barbara. In two years, we’ve reached about 65% of this monumental goal and aim to finish by 2025. We are also in the process of mapping the needs for a DignityNow San Francisco campaign. These efforts have prepared us well to design and execute DignityNow LA. In this grant term, we will measure our success in the delivery of a thoughtful and thorough strategic plan that includes identified partners, funding streams, and site locations, as well as an executed research and media campaign to build support.

McKinsey & Company will serve in the role of pro bono research and evaluation consultant. They will operate as a partner to DignityMoves, helping us understand, quantify, and map out what the city of Los Angeles has (with respect to resources in the form of services, land, funding, etc.) and what it needs (in the form of numbers of beds) to begin addressing and bringing an end to unsheltered homelessness. McKinsey & Company will help us develop and carry out a tailored Needs and Assets Assessment that will arm DignityMoves with the information and data the organization needs to approach addressing unsheltered homeless in and across the city of Los Angeles, utilizing interim supportive housing in conjunction with wraparound services, as a primary intervention to do so.