The Brief

With more than 187,000 people sleeping on California’s streets and in its shelters, the state’s homeless services industry is struggling to hire enough qualified workers to help them.

Last year, Santa Monica College set out to fix that: It heralded the state’s first-ever community college program aimed at training the next generation of homeless service workers. But the program has fallen victim to many of the same challenges that have long stymied progress on homelessness in California, including unreliable funding, high attrition rates and political turmoil.

In fact, it’s not clear if the much-needed program will persist.

“We know the value added when somebody is adequately trained before they’re deployed,” said Vanessa Rios, a senior advisor for workforce development with the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, which funds the community college program. “It would be a disservice to our system should we not fund and support this effort. Where the dollars (will) come from, I don’t know.”

It’s the front-line jobs, where staff interact face-to-face with unhoused clients, that often are the most difficult for agencies to fill or keep filled. That includes doing outreach in encampments, staffing homeless shelters, and working as a case manager trying to find permanent housing for clients.

More than 8,000 people worked in the homeless services sector in Los Angeles County in 2022, a report by consulting firm KPMG and United Way of Greater Los Angeles found. But the county still had more than 1,300 open positions and would need more than 2,200 workers on top of that — so, more than 11,500 altogether — to meet the needs of Los Angeles County’s homeless population.

Even compared to other major U.S. cities such as Atlanta, Chicago or Houston, homeless service workers in Los Angeles have a higher turnover rate, according to a more recent KPMG report.

It’s an issue all over the state. Most nonprofits that provide homeless services in California can’t help everyone who asks, in part because they struggle to recruit and retain staff, according to a 2024 study by the UC Berkeley Terner Center for Housing Innovation.

The new community college program was supposed to fill those holes by giving students the specific skills they need to succeed in homeless services. But amid perennial state budget uncertainty and questions about the region’s homeless services, Rios couldn’t say if her team will be able to fund another round of students at Santa Monica College.

The state’s Homeless Housing, Assistance and Prevention fund initially supported the program with roughly $750,000. That fund is the main source of flexible money that California cities and counties use to combat homelessness. Once the $750,000 runs out, it’s not clear whether it will be renewed. Gov. Gavin Newsom’s proposed budget, released in January, did not include any new money for Homeless Housing, Assistance and Prevention, although the Legislature could still add some.

That uncertainty is a major problem. For years, nonprofits, cities and counties have said a lack of consistent state funding hampers their ability to fight homelessness. While Newsom has poured billions into the cause, it has largely been in one-time grants — not the predictable, ongoing funding that service providers say they need in order to plan long-term programs.

At the same time, the agency that funds the community college program is in crisis. The Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority — a joint agency of the city and county of LA — has all but imploded. Earlier this month, the LA County Board of Supervisors voted to pull its money out of the joint agency, following a scathing audit of its work. Three days later, the head of the agency said she would resign. Now, the city is considering pulling out as well.

Santa Monica College in Santa Monica on April 16, 2025. Santa Monica College launched a new Homeless Service Work Certificate Program last year in partnership with Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority.

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“We’re hopeful that we’re able to secure funding in the future,” said Patricia Ramos, dean of academic affairs for Santa Monica College. “But nothing is guaranteed.”

Rios said her team is looking for additional money to support the college program, including from the state and philanthropic partners. If the community college program does continue, it wouldn't accept another class of students until spring of 2026.

‘Can I do this?’

When Tamyra Simpson saw a LinkedIn advertisement about the Santa Monica College program, she thought it was “too good to be true.”

Growing up, her grandmother, a substance use counselor, would pick up Simpson at her childhood home in Pasadena and travel to Skid Row in downtown Los Angeles, where they’d serve food to homeless people on Thanksgiving.

“The women in my family, they’ve always been service-oriented,” she said.

Simpson works as a nanny in the wealthy Los Feliz neighborhood near downtown Los Angeles, but said her goal is to eventually work in homeless services.

She was one of about 70 people who applied for admission into the inaugural Santa Monica College homelessness services program, and one of just 27 students who were ultimately selected, said Steven Sedky, who oversees the program. Students take multiple courses over the span of two semesters, where they learn about the history of homeless services, effective practices to help homeless clients, and even strategies to avoid burnout. The program culminates in a paid internship at a relevant nonprofit or agency in Los Angeles County.

Tamyra Simpson at Santa Monica College in Santa Monica on April 16, 2025. Simpson is part of a new Homeless Service Work Certificate Program launched at Santa Monica College last year in partnership with Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority.

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Only about half of the students are left, Sedky said — an attrition rate “much higher than we initially anticipated.”

Students dropped out for a variety of reasons, he said. One student lost housing, while other students struggled with the commute to class, which includes in-person meetings on Wednesdays.

On Wednesday mornings, Simpson starts her nanny job at 7 am. Then, around 8 am, she begins the hour drive to Santa Monica. If traffic is bad, it can take up to an hour and a half. After class, a little after noon, she drives back to Los Feliz and works another five hours as a nanny.

“I really ask myself, ‘Can I do this?’” she said. “But there’s so much value in this program, this experience. I don’t think I would have changed anything if I could.”

After she graduates in June, she’ll face a job market rife with its own challenges. An entry-level position at LA-based homeless services nonprofit The People Concern, for example, typically pays between $21 and $25 an hour, said CEO John Maceri. Simpson said she makes about twice that much working as a nanny.

“LA is an expensive place to live,” Maceri said. “It’s hard to survive.”

“This sector does not pay livable wages unless you’re in senior management,” said Celina Alvarez, executive director of Housing Works. She helped create the Santa Monica College program and teaches a class there. “We’ve got to do better by (the workers). They are first responders. They don’t even have access to mental health support, considering they experience and witness a tremendous amount of human suffering on a daily basis.”

Alvarez said between 10 and 15 of the 73 total jobs at her organization are vacant.

At The People Concern, which will host two Santa Monica College students as interns, about 85 jobs are open — about 10% of their total positions. Once the interns complete the program, Maceri said his organization would be happy to hire them.

“The quality of the work is only as good as the quality of the people doing the work,” he said. “And we need more folks in the homelessness response system workforce.”

A difficult job

Low pay isn’t the only thing that makes people wary of jumping into a career in homeless services. The work is extremely grueling and difficult. Burnout is common. A lack of resources makes everything worse. Workers can try their best to help someone, but if there are no shelter beds or housing available, they can’t do much. That can be very frustrating, Maceri said.

“Sometimes people have a fantasy of what the work is like, and then get into it and realize ‘Oh, this is different than what I thought,’” he said. “I think most people want to help, but the intensity of the work day in and day out is a lot to handle.”

A lack of adequate training makes it even harder, as workers may not know how to respond to the specific challenges they encounter in the field. Alvarez gave an example of a newly hired case manager at her organization: The case manager went to a client’s house to pick up the client for a psychiatric appointment. Before they left, the client injected themself with an unknown substance. The big-hearted case manager didn’t know what the client had injected but took them to their appointment anyway — a dangerous move that could have ended with the client becoming aggressive or even overdosing in the caseworker’s car, Alvarez said.

Existing degree programs don’t train workers for the realities of what they’ll face in the field, such as navigating the bureaucracy of hospitals and nursing homes, or how to reunite a homeless individual with family, Rios said.

The program also tries to prepare students for burnout, by providing counselors who debrief with students after they go out in the field, and teach them techniques to cope with what they see.

Loma Linda University campus on April 22, 2024.

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Jules Hotz

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CalMatters

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But there are some intractable problems this training program can’t fix.

For social workers, who have a master’s degree, it’s more lucrative to work as a therapist in private practice. Even other low-paying industries, such as child welfare, offer special grants or fellowships. In Los Angeles, the county’s decision to gut the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority makes it even harder for graduates to imagine this industry as a stable career choice.

Still, as a current student, Simpson is hopeful that the community college program will continue.

“As an inaugural cohort, there are going to be missteps. We’re essentially the guinea pigs,” she said. “At its core, it’s an incredible opportunity.”

She said she’s well-aware of the pay cut that an entry-level job in homeless services might require, and that she’s willing to keep her full-time nanny position as long as it takes to find other work.

Given the number of job vacancies, it’s unlikely that she’ll wait very long.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

In what could be a major change in oversight of L.A. homelessness spending, the City Council’s homelessness committee is recommending the city start shifting some programs away from the L.A. Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA) over the course of the upcoming fiscal year. Which programs and who would oversee them remains to be seen.

The move comes a year after L.A. County decided to pull its funding from the joint city-county agency in response to multiple audits that found LAHSA failed to properly track and manage billions of homelessness dollars. Officials are also warning homelessness services may have to be cut due to ongoing, years’ long delays on LAHSA’s part in reimbursing service providers for their work. The committee’s chair, Councilmember Nithya Raman, describes LAHSA as “plagued with scandal” in her mayoral platform.

On Wednesday, the council’s Housing and Homelessness Committee voted to recommend multiple changes to city homelessness spending, including a recommendation by Raman to shift management of some city programs away from LAHSA during the next fiscal year that starts July 1.

Another recommendation advanced by the committee, which was proposed by Councilmember Tim McOsker, is to pursue negotiations to give the city “a clear majority” in the governance and decision-making control at LAHSA — including over federal funding meant for 84 other cities in L.A. County. Currently, LAHSA’s governing commission is split 50-50 between city and county appointees. Starting next year, the city will be by far the largest funder of LAHSA.

[Click here to read the recommendations a majority of the committee voted to make.]

The recommendations call for city officials to send the council a report by July 1 analyzing which city programs make sense to shift away from LAHSA and instead be managed by the county, the city or another entity. If approved by the council, $450,000 would be budgeted to hire consultants to advise the city about the funding shift, and city officials would be directed to update the council every 30 days about the transition.

The recommendations now go to the full City Council for a decision.

Mayor Karen Bass has expressed concern that moving too quickly to shift funds from LAHSA could harm services for unhoused people. That concern was echoed at Wednesday’s committee meeting by Gita O’Neill, who is serving as LAHSA CEO during a year-long leave from being an attorney at the city attorney’s office.

“ I would just ask this committee to take their time to look at the issues. Sometimes when things are rushed and hurried, unfortunately our unhoused folks fall through the cracks,” O’Neill said. “Seeing it go really quickly, sometimes things can get lost, sometimes contracts can get lost.”

Councilmember Heather Hutt, who is on the council’s homelessness committee, said Wednesday she does not support shifting spending yet to the county or in-house.

“It's too premature, too early and too rushed,” Hutt said. “Given the actions of the county and the federal government, we need to make sure our system is stabilized over the next two years before we think about what a longer transition looks like.”

She voted against Raman’s recommendations to start shifting funding over the next fiscal year, and voted for McOsker’s recommendations to try to beef up city control of LAHSA.

The full City Council is expected to decide on the recommendations at a future meeting. Regardless of what the city does, all of the county’s funding of services through LAHSA will be pulled as of July 1 and moved to full county control.

East Bay Rep. Eric Swalwell resigned from Congress on Tuesday, days after sexual assault and misconduct allegations against the Democratic front-runner upended California’s wide-open governor’s race.

Swalwell dropped out of the race Sunday and resigned from Congress on Tuesday. His exit comes as a new accuser came forward Tuesday, alleging that Swalwell drugged and raped her in 2018. Gov. Gavin Newsom quickly set Aug. 18 as the date for a special election to fill Swalwell’s seat.

Here’s what happened and what it means for the June 2 statewide primary and the future of Swalwell’s congressional seat.

Why did Swalwell resign from Congress and drop out of the governor’s race?

Swalwell, 45, is accused of sexually assaulting two women and harassing others.

On Friday, he was accused of raping a former staff member twice, when she was too intoxicated to consent, and of harassing three other women, including by sending nude photos and making unwanted physical advances.

Those allegations were detailed in a San Francisco Chronicle investigation and a subsequent report by CNN. The latest allegation was made by another woman, Lonna Drewes, who told reporters at a press conference Tuesday that Swalwell drugged and raped her in 2018 in a West Hollywood hotel.

Attorney Lisa Bloom (right) comforts Lonna Drewes during a press conference in which Drewes accused U.S. Rep. Eric Swalwell of sexual assault Tuesday in Beverly Hills.

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Swalwell has denied the allegations since they broke April 10, and his lawyers sent the women accusing him cease-and-desist letters demanding they retract their claims. In a video message Swalwell posted late Friday, he seemed to acknowledge he’d been unfaithful to his wife.

On Tuesday, after the second allegation of rape, Swalwell issued a statement through an attorney, which the lawyer posted on social media. It said that Swalwell “categorically and unequivocally denies each and every allegation of sexual misconduct and assault” and calls them a “calculated and transparent political hit job." His lawyer, Sara Azari, also went on News Nation on Tuesday night and said that “regret is not rape.”

The most serious allegations involve a woman who worked for Swalwell’s presidential campaign and in his congressional office, a job she began at age 21. She told the Chronicle that Swalwell, who is 17 years older than she, began pursuing her within weeks of joining his office in 2019, sending her explicit pictures on Snapchat and asking for nude photos in return.

She alleged that in September 2019, she went out drinking with a group, including Swalwell, in Pleasanton and woke up the next day naked in his hotel room, feeling the effects of vaginal intercourse.

The woman also described a similar alleged assault in 2024 in New York City after a night of drinking, recalling portions of the night, including being in Swalwell’s hotel room, pushing him off of her and telling him no. She said she woke up alone in his hotel room with vaginal bleeding and bruising.

Swalwell is also facing possible criminal investigations in both New York and California. The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office said Saturday that it is looking into the alleged 2024 assault, and the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office said over the weekend that prosecutors there are “evaluating whether any alleged criminal conduct occurred within Alameda County.” And on Tuesday, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department said it is investigating Drewe’s allegations.

What happens to Eric Swalwell’s seat now?

Swalwell represented California’s 14th Congressional District, which includes the East Bay cities of Dublin, Pleasanton, Livermore and Hayward. He submitted his resignation Tuesday. The seat is now vacant.

Gov. Gavin Newsom quickly called a special election this summer to replace him. Whoever wins will fill the seat for the remaining months of Swalwell’s term, which ends in January. In the meantime, the district has no voting representation in Congress, only the staff who have remained to assist constituents.

Meanwhile, the election cycle for the next term, beginning in January, continues on its regular schedule, with the June 2 primary and a potential runoff in the November general election.

Swalwell is not on the ballot for his congressional seat because he was running for governor. However, his name will still appear on the June ballot for governor, since it’s legally too late to remove it.

When is the special election for Swalwell’s seat and who might run?

Newsom has scheduled a special election to fill the remainder of Swalwell’s term. First, a special primary election will be held June 16. If a candidate receives more than 50% of the vote, they would win outright and immediately take his seat in Congress.

A frontrunner for California governor, U.S. Rep. Eric Swalwell suspended his campaign Sunday after a series of women accused him of sexual assault and harassment.

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If no candidate clears that threshold, the top two finishers will advance to a runoff election Aug. 18. Whoever wins will serve only the remainder of Swalwell’s term until January.

That means that if no candidate receives more than 50% of the vote in both the statewide primary and the special primary, voters in Swalwell’s East Bay district could potentially cast four separate ballots for their congressional representative this year.

Nine candidates already were running to succeed Swalwell in the 14th District in the June 2 primary for the full term set to begin in January. State Sen. Aisha Wahab is the only one with statewide elected experience. Former Dublin Mayor Melissa Hernandez, who serves as president of the BART Board of Directors, also is running.

Those candidates also may run in the special primary election.

Who is running for governor of California now?

The top-polling candidates in the crowded field include two Republicans: businessman Steve Hilton and Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco. Two Democrats other than Swalwell also have been enjoying double-digit support in most polls: former Orange County Rep. Katie Porter and billionaire Democratic activist Tom Steyer.

Other Democratic candidates include Xavier Becerra, who previously served as U.S. Health and Human Services secretary and California attorney general; San José Mayor Matt Mahan; former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa; California Superintendent for Public Instruction Tony Thurmond; and former state Controller Betty Yee.

Swalwell’s departure stands to further shake up what has long been an unsettled race — and California’s first wide-open campaign for governor in two decades.

How does Swalwell dropping out affect the California governor’s race?

Prior to Swalwell dropping out, he, Porter and Steyer were the top-polling Democrats. It seems likely that Porter and Steyer could now attract some of his supporters.

California has a “top-two” primary system, meaning the two candidates who receive the most votes in June, regardless of party, will move on to a November runoff. That means two Republicans or two Democrats could face each other in a runoff election.

There’s been concern among Democrats that because no Democratic candidate has consolidated support, Hilton and Bianco could make it into the runoff, shutting out Democrats and resulting in a Republican governor. That seems less likely now, especially since Hilton recently received President Donald Trump’s endorsement, which is likely to play well among Republican voters. The state GOP failed to endorse either candidate at their convention this weekend, though Bianco did get more votes than Hilton from party insiders.

If Hilton surges ahead of Bianco, the race could come down to a contest between Porter and Steyer for a second spot in the runoff.

When is the primary for California governor, and for whom will I be able to vote?

Election Day is June 2. The last day to register to vote is May 18.

Counties will begin sending out mail-in ballots May 4, and in-person early voting starts May 23.

To register to vote, contact your county elections office. The official state information guide is available here.

After about two decades of planning, six years of construction and a cost of $720 million, L.A. County Museum of Art officials gave a preview of the new David Geffen museum galleries on Wednesday.

“This museum is very experimental,” said Michael Govan, LACMA’s CEO. “It's very new, it's very fresh. It's a new way to think about our history and being more accessible at the same time that I think it's more meditative."

Gone is LACMA’s 1965 iconic, boxy gallery building, replaced by an exposed concrete and glass structure distinguished by a soft, curved profile.

“You can stand in the building and know where you are, not in a box… you are here in the city, you can look around the perimeter and know exactly where you are,” said Diana Magaloni, LACMA’s senior deputy director overseeing conservation, curatorial and exhibitions.

LACMA's new David Geffen galleries have floor to ceiling windows and are more open than traditional museum art galleries.

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The feeling of knowing where you are is due largely to the acres of open space and plazas next to the building and ground level, as well as the floor to ceiling windows in the galleries’ second level that allow you to see L.A.’s mountains and urban skylines.

LACMA officials say the design by renowned minimalist Swiss architect Peter Zumthor will better serve the public’s interaction with its massive art collection that spans 6,000 years and cultures from around the globe. The collection includes Southeast Asian sculptures, paintings by Diego Rivera, as well as contemporary art by Southern California artists.

LACMA CEO Michael Govan, left, with Peter Zumthor, the architect who designed LACMA's new David Geffen galleries.

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LAist

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“One of the nice things about this building is there are many new works of art and then there are old friends,” said Stephanie Barron, head of modern art at LACMA, as she stood next to a 12-foot-tall by 18-foot-wide piece by Henri Matisse.

The 2,000-pound work features multicolored leaves made of ceramic. It’s well known to LACMA’s visitors because it hung for years near the old gallery’s entrance. Now, the work faces northwest toward the Hollywood Hills and the Pacific Ocean.

LACMA opens its new David Geffen galleries to members on April 19 and to the general public on May 4.

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Success, Govan said, will be measured by visitors’ reactions to seeing art in this new setting, as well as what the setting does to people visiting by themselves or with groups of people.

“The way this building works, the way you can wander through galleries, the way the light works, the way it brings collections and thinking together, the way we’re collaborating” centers human interactions, Govan said. “It’s a launch pad, not an end point.”

LACMA’s David Geffen galleries are open to members from Sunday April 19 to Sunday May 3, then to the general public after that.