On a mission: Supervisor Horvath tackles homelessness

By SIMHA HADDAD

Los Angeles County Supervisor Lindsey P. Horvath (3rd District) is on a mission to end homelessness in Los Angeles County. She represents 10 cities and 26 unincorporated communities from West Hollywood to Malibu, Topanga to Chatsworth, and Pacoima to Santa Monica. Her district spans 446.08 square miles and is plagued by homelessness.

There are approximately 69,144 homeless people within the county, and that number is on the rise. 75% of those unhoused individuals do not have any form of permanent housing and are forced to wander from place to place, fi nding or making shelter wherever they can.

Six out of 10 of these unhoused individuals are newly homeless – a refl ection of the inequity between rising home prices and stagnant income levels that have left so many in California unable to make ends meet.

In January of this year, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors declared a state of emergency for the homeless crisis.

jurisdictions. She is behind several initiatives aimed at increasing interim and permanent housing placements by working in more streamlined collaboration with local partners and stakeholders.

To further ensure her dream of ending the homeless crisis, Horvath placed herself on the Board of the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA), “to hold them accountable for getting the funding and resources that are needed in the community, and they are delivered directly on the ground,” she noted.

LAHSA is the lead agency for the Los Angeles Continuum of Care, the regional planning body that coordinates housing and services for homeless families and individuals in the County. LAHSA coordinates and manages over $800 million annually in federal, state, county, and city funds for programs that provide shelter, housing, and services to people experiencing homelessness.

LAHSA says that over the past fi ve years, the agency and its partners have made 84,000 permanent housing placements–enough to fi ll Dodger Stadium one and a half times. Last year alone, the rehousing system made 21,213 placements.

When asked whether there is any space in her district for the tiny home communities popularized by media as a quaint and convenient solution to housing the unhoused, Horvath said that tiny homes are not her preferred method of ending this crisis.

“There are some tiny homes that have popped up in the valley. I will say they are not everyone’s favorite form of solving this crisis. Some communities prefer not to have tiny homes, and I think that given the magnitude of the problem that we are trying to solve, I would rather implement solutions that are more scalable,” she said.

“There have also been some safety issues raised with tiny homes. I think we have seen, not even just in Los Angeles but in places throughout the country, that have tried to use this as a solution.

that provides individuals experiencing homelessness with essential tools necessary to stabilize their lives, secure income, and fi nd permanent housing.

“We were able to use modular construction that allows houses to be constructed more cost-eff ectively in a timely fashion,” Horvath said of the 51-unit, 5-story development consisting of 50 fully furnished studio units and 1 two-bedroom management unit. The development is targeted toward seniors and senior veterans (55+) who are formerly homeless.

“The declaration has allowed us to do two things,” Horvath told The Blade. “First, we were able to accelerate hiring. We learned that in the Department of Mental Health, for example, it can take longer than a year for mental health professionals to be hired into the department. That is completely unacceptable. We need to hire people faster to do this work.

“Second, we were also able to expedite contracting. We learned from LAHSA that a contract could be touched up to 140 times before it is fi nally executed, and funding is able to reach service providers. Obviously, that is unacceptable. We are improving our contracting processes.”

The services Horvath are most concerned with are stable housing, access to mental health care, and providing economic opportunities to the underprivileged.

Stable housing

Horvath’s encampment resolution seeks to reduce unsheltered homelessness in partnership with local

“We also often see when people are placed in interim housing like a tiny home, they fi nd that they are in that housing solution longer than they expected. Tiny homes are not intended to be long-term solutions. They are supposed to be an interim place to get people off the streets and then into permanent supportive housing. It’s challenging to provide the supportive services that people need at a tiny home development. The wraparound services are what help people to stay off the streets. We want to stand up housing developments that accommodate the kinds of needs and services that people expect when they are coming off the streets and dealing with issues that have impacted them big homeless.”

Horvath explained that she prefers modular housing to tiny homes. This modular housing concept was used for a new development for veterans at 11010 Santa Monica Boulevard in West Los Angeles in conjunction with the Weingart Foundation.

The Weingart Center is a 501(c)(3) nonprofi t agency

In an eff ort to stop people from losing their homes due to COVID and economic hardship, Horvath and the Board of Supervisors are working with the Department of Consumer and Business Aff airs in the Principal Assistance Program, making sure that property owners who might be landlords, or, as the Supervisor put it, “Mom and Pop-style landlords” get the services that they need.

“We set up rental assistance programs for tenants and landlords to access so we are able to keep people and housing that they otherwise could not aff ord,” said Horvath.

Given the new laws attempting to outlaw the existence of the LGBTQ+ community in many Republican-controlled red states across America, young LGBTQ+ people fl ock to places like Los Angeles with little to no resources to avoid being persecuted for their identities.

When asked how the she intends to deal with the infl ux of homeless LGBTQ youth pouring into LGBTQ+ safe havens like Los Angeles, Horvath told the Blade that she is prepared to welcome them with open arms.

“We tackled this challenge a lot when I was the Mayor of West Hollywood. We saw a lot of people come to West Hollywood for exactly this reason, and we know that that is not unique to West Hollywood. It’s happening throughout Los Angeles County, so we are already providing those services to those who need them. Anyone who comes to our area will be met with support and care.”

Horvath also shared that she is looking forward to Pride month as another way to show her support for the LGBTQ+ community. She has co-authored a motion to have the Pride fl ag fl own all over Los Angeles County during the month of June.

“We are very excited to be making sure that our support of the LGBTQ+ community is strong and visible,” said Horvath.

Access to mental health care

Horvath’s initiatives supply mental health and substance use disorder services to unsheltered and sheltered persons by coordinating fi eld-based services and reducing wait times.

“We must lead countywide with a system of care that supports and keeps people safe,” said Horvath. “I initiated my city’s request to have dedicated Mental Evaluation Teams (MET), which combine a clinically-trained social worker with a public safety professional to respond to relevant calls. I support further investment in behavioral health response teams for relevant calls, as well as coordinated responses with public safety professionals when needed.

“We must invest in establishing teams to meet people where they are with the relevant support and resources they need – including mental health services, addiction recovery, and job training – instead of leaving them to face the challenges of navigating through an endless bureaucratic process on their own. We must invest in solutions that take into account the root causes, rather than wastefully spending more public dollars without solving the foundational problems.”

Economic opportunities

Horvath also stressed that Los Angeles has historically used “redlining,” or racially and economically discriminatory practices, to stop the underprivileged from receiving services and care. Horvath explained that these practices have created pockets of poverty resulting from a lack of resources and economic opportunity.

“We need to overcome that history of redlining and racist development by connecting our communities, literally. We can do this through systems like our metro system, which is why I am particularly excited about the

Crenshaw Northern extension connecting communities.”

According to metro.net, the Crenshaw Northern Extension project will fi ll a major gap in the Metro Rail network and create opportunities by connecting the Crenshaw District (a historically underprivileged Black-majority district), Mid-City, West Hollywood, and Hollywood.

Horvath pointed out that this would link Angelenos to health care services like Cedar-Sinai, and the various medical services on Olympic Boulevard.

“We also want to be making sure that we are bringing services and support directly into each and every community,” said Horvath. “So, making sure that we are bringing the County outside of itself to downtown and out into the neighborhoods where services and support are really needed.”

Horvath plans to “meet people where they are,” meaning there will be more diversity hiring so that care can be culturally relatable to those in need.

“We need to make sure that we are investing in communities where help is needed the most. We need to make sure that we are providing culturally competent services and care, so whether that is language appropriate, whether it is making sure that people are getting services from people who look like them and who have similar lived experiences as them, we need to expand the kind of services and support that we provide to make sure that we are supporting everyone where they are in their communities.

“We need to expand and intentionally hire some communities that have typically been left out of services like mental health care services and like the supportive social services that so many communities need, but often those opportunities have been limited to people who are already in certain communities, or who have been given certain opportunities. We need to break through and do better.”

When asked to name some communities where help is needed most, Horvath responded that communities in the San Fernando Valley and economically distressed areas like Pacoima and Sylmar have reached out, stating that they have felt unfairly left out of the type of care she is committed to spreading throughout the County.

“We also know that even in some of our wealthy Westside LA areas, there are still people who are struggling with poverty and with the aff ordability crisis that we all face, so we need to make sure that even in wealthy communities, or perceived wealthy communities, people who are struggling and need help get it.”

Horvath is also behind the County’s Economic Opportunity Grant Program (EOG) for small and micro businesses as well as nonprofi ts. EOG will award more than $54 million across 6,800 grants to organizations in Los Angeles County adversely aff ected by the COVID-19 pandemic.

For those seeking career guidance and help, LA County’s America’s Job Center off ers free job training and career counseling, paid work experience, layoff aversion, and other employment resources.

Budget breakdown:

LA County’s Homeless Initiative Budget is currently a $600 million proposed budget for 2023-2024. The stated goals for the budget are:

• Reducing encampments to bring unsheltered people indoors

• Increasing interim and permanent housing placements

• Ramping up mental health and substance use disorder services for people experiencing homelessness.

Horvath is dedicated to tracking the allotted budget so that funds are received and used appropriately and eff ectively.

“What I think we need to do is make sure we are better using the resources that we have by not investing in solutions we know do not deliver the results,” Horvath told The Blade. “We really need to be holding ourselves accountable to tracking how investments are delivered. We are so focused on getting people off the street that we are not always clear about the long-term impact we have. We need to follow people through the system to make sure they are staying in housing and make sure they stay off the streets.”

The $609.7 million represents an additional $61.8 million over last year’s allocation of $547.8 million, an increase of 11%. It includes funding for:

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