(Client: Home For Good)

DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES — Home for Good, an ambitious, business sector-powered plan to eradicate veteran and chronic homelessness in Los Angeles, will announce today that it is dispersing more than $105 million in grants to area permanent supportive housing providers.

The grants include $5 million raised from private donors like the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation, the United Way and Goldman Sachs. The rest of the money comes from government entities that have agreed to spend more on Home for Good’s target population — veterans and those who have been on the streets for years.

Of the $100 million contributed by various city and county entities, $55 million represent new dollars for programs that focus on the chronically homeless, said Jerry Neuman, co-chair of Home for Good, a partnership between the L.A. Area Chamber of Commerce and the United Way of Greater Los Angeles.

Central City beneficiaries include Skid Row Housing Trust, which is getting $225,000, Lamp Community, which will receive $200,000, and the Downtown Women’s Center, which was awarded $135,000.

Since launching in 2010, Home for Good organizers have lobbied city and county agencies and departments to funnel more of their homeless aid toward permanent supportive housing. The agenda hinges in part on the idea that housing the chronically homeless ultimately saves taxpayers who end up paying for emergency room bills and jail stints incurred by those on the street.

The grants are the first allocation from Home for Good’s Funders Collaborative, which pools and aligns public and private funds for developing permanent supportive housing. It allows housing providers to apply to one entity for funds that could come from an array of sources.

Historically, providers have secured capital to build housing from one source. They had to seek other dollars to pay for the services.

“Instead of service dollars going to one entity and housing dollars going to another, for the first time, we’ve coordinated it so we can make the most of getting permanent supportive housing put together,” Neuman said.

The process benefitted Lamp Community, a Skid Row-based homeless services provider. Organization leaders submitted a single application to the Home for Good program and won $200,000 to pay for supportive services for 40 formerly homeless individuals. Lamp was also awarded Section 8 rent vouchers through the Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles that will allow the organization to house 20 additional people in sites around the city, said Donna Gallup, Lamp’s executive director.

“We went through one application process and were able to access both a housing rental subsidy and the services and oftentimes were not able to put that together,” Gallup said. “Instead we’d have to go to five different sources.”

Skid Row Housing Trust, one of the largest permanent supportive housing developers in the region, was awarded $225,000 to pay for in-house services in some of its older apartment buildings. United Way contributed $175,000, and $50,000 came from another private foundation.

While it is a leader in the supportive housing model, SRHT only started incorporating onsite services in 2003, when it revamped the St. George Hotel at Third and Main streets. The Home for Good grant will put more services in some of the entity’s 19 older buildings that now lack in-house support programs. That increases the odds that the formerly homeless will stay housed longer, officials say.

“Typically the grants in the past have been targeted to new people moving into housing,” said SRHT Executive Director Mike Alvidrez. “One of the good things here is we’re able to reach back for people who may have moved into housing with just as many disabilities, but don’t have the services there.”

The Downtown Women’s Center’s $135,000 award will pay for supportive services in its 48-unit permanent supportive housing facility on Los Angeles Street, DWC spokesman Patrick Shandrick said. The facility is undergoing a $4 million renovation paid for chiefly by foundations and private donors, he said.

Business Responsibility

Home for Good is novel in two ways: It has the business community working side-by-side with nonprofit homeless advocates, and it is driving policy. Since 2010, Los Angeles has seen a paradigm shift in homeless services to prioritize permanent supportive housing over other service categories like emergency shelters or transitional housing.

That shift has helped connect previously fragmented funding streams controlled by the city and the county.

“Home for Good, they’re like a conduit,” said Ninth District Councilwoman Jan Perry. “They’re a place to meet somewhere in the middle. That is something that is very different than in the past.”

Still, the campaign has generated skepticism among service providers in Skid Row and beyond that are not engaged in permanent supportive housing.

Herb Smith, president of the Los Angeles Mission, said he cautiously supports Home for Good. The mission, like other shelters in Skid Row, relies on private donors and foundations to fund its array of services. Lately, several foundations have realigned their dollars to support permanent supportive housing, diminishing the pool of funds that cover transitional housing and emergency beds for the newly homeless.

“There are a lot of people who go through the continuum of care that just need housing that’s affordable,” Smith said. “To not provide that, but to provide the permanent supportive housing for the chronically homeless person, I think does an injustice to others who have tried to get their life together and need help along the way.”

If Home for Good’s goal to end chronic homelessness by 2016 sounds ambitious, its organizers believe they are on target.

According to the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, which conducts a biannual homeless count, there were 51,340 people sleeping on the streets in L.A. County on any given night in 2011. Of that figure, 10,901 people were chronically homeless, meaning they had been on the streets for more than one year, or had experienced at least four episodes of homelessness in three years. The count found 8,131 homeless veterans.

A Home for Good analysis issued in February reported that 2,273 chronically homeless individuals were moved into supportive housing last year, and 864 homeless vets were placed in permanent shelter.

The real measure of success may come in January, when LAHSA conducts its next homeless count, said Neuman, the Home for Good co-chair.

“In January, I think it will be proven,” he said.

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