Our Community LA

OCLA's "What I Need" App (WIN) connects homeless and housing-insecure individuals to 2,300+ programs in 12 categories of services, including healthcare, jobs, food, and shelter. Using groundbreaking new technology, we will develop a benefit screening tool in WIN to help users learn if they qualify for government benefits, and if so, how they can apply. This will exponentially increase WIN’s ability to empower people to make positive changes in their lives by providing access to needed and often overlooked financial and basic needs resources.

The free, confidential What I Need (WIN) Mobile App, available in English and Spanish, empowers those who are unhoused or struggling to avoid homelessness to easily locate over 2300 free programs offered around LA County. WIN offers unique support to vulnerable youth, families, seniors and adults while tackling homelessness and the homelessness pipeline by breaking information barriers that too often prevent those who are struggling from finding help. New in Aug 2023, WIN will offer users a survey to learn if they qualify for HUD housing.

The South LA WIN Direct Outreach test pilot, launched in Fall 2021, is a place-based outreach program designed to introduce the free WIN What I Need mobile app to this high need, largely Spanish-speaking community. We will expand from 1 to 4 outreach staff and will prioritize hiring SLA youth and residents with lived experience with resource insecurity. Staff will be trained to introduce WIN to the SLA community at-large and teach resource-insecure/homeless residents how to use WIN to find housing and other free supportive services.