Housing and Support for Unhoused Angelenos

Affordable housing and homelessness

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

Los Angeles is in the grip of one of the most significant homelessness crises globally. In 2023, the County and City of Los Angeles both declared homelessness a state of emergency. The rate of homelessness in Los Angeles County is on the rise, increasing by about 10% annually, a result of rising rents, cost of living, inflation, stagnant wages, a severe lack of available affordable housing, systemic discrimination, and depleting social safety nets. LA Family Housing (LAFH) operates with a Housing First approach to prioritize helping people move into permanent housing. Yet we are not Housing Only—we combine housing services with supportive services to ensure our unhoused clients have all the resources they need, from basic needs to mental and physical health care. We know that it takes ongoing connection to services to ensure people can retain their housing and achieve long-term self-sufficiency and stability in order to thrive.

As one of our Program Directors says, LA Family Housing and its staff are "hope dealers." We deliver hope, housing, and services, to Los Angeles residents facing homelessness. As the largest homeless service provider and affordable housing developer in the San Fernando Valley and among the largest in Los Angeles County, LAFH has been a lifeline for over 15,000 people experiencing homelessness over the course of the last year.
LAFH is unique in its holistic approach. We start with daily street-based outreach with teams that include peers with lived experience with homelessness delivering supplies like water, food, and raingear and building up trust. We offer housing navigation, placement, and location services and move participants directly into available housing whenever possible, or interim housing or motel beds to provide immediate safety and stability if not. Our Housing Location team builds up relationships with landlords in the region to open up more available units to Angelenos experiencing homelessness. We own and operate over 40 buildings of interim, permanent supportive, and affordable housing in Los Angeles, including 254 units opening in the next year. At every stage of the process, we connect participants to supportive services. In this way, we will permanently house 600 Angelenos over the course of the LA2050 grant period. Supporting costs for client needs and personnel for Housing Stabilization, we will leverage our LA2050 grant to provide housing stability.

A grant from LA2050 will directly contribute life-changing initiatives that will house and support 600 Angelenos looking for a new start and a new home. LA Family Housing is dedicated to advancing LA2050’s vision of a more equitable Los Angeles County where every individual, regardless of background, has access to safe and affordable housing. Given the myriad impacts of discrimination on housing insecurity, over 3 in 4 LAFH participants are people of color. Many are immigrants, single mothers, and trauma-impacted families. LAFH's commitment to permanently housing and supporting at least 600 unhoused individuals and families over the course of the next year is a commitment to creating a more equitable Los Angeles.
Through this initiative, we will provide comprehensive services designed to break generational cycles of poverty and housing insecurity, and in doing so, build up a more inclusive and prosperous community for LA County.

With over 40 years of dedicated service housing Angelenos experiencing homelessness and creating affordable housing solutions, LAFH is a leading provider in Los Angeles. In 2023, we facilitated the transition of 2,419 individuals into permanent housing, approximately 10% of the total placements in Los Angeles County. Our Outreach Team actively engaged with 3,770 individuals experiencing homelessness, with 86% of them ultimately accessing our housing services.
We gauge our impact through robust metrics, including improvements in employment rates, housing retention rates, mental health outcomes, and other indicators. These metrics are tracked rigorously in the Homeless Management Information System (HMIS), a HUD tool used countywide, and supplemented by participant surveys and direct feedback with case managers. This comprehensive evaluative strategy ensures that we are adaptive to the immediate and long-term needs of our community members.