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.

(

Alisha Jucevic

/

CalMatters

)

“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.

(

Alisha Jucevic

/

CalMatters

)

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.

(

Jules Hotz

/

CalMatters

)

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.

Southern California summers aren’t exactly known for mugginess.

But uncharacteristic humidity has been clinging to the region for almost a month, and it looks like there’s little relief coming our way.

It’s not enough moisture to create much, if any, rain, but it is abnormal for this time of year

The dew point in Southern California is normally around 60 degrees at this time of year, forecasters say. But in downtown Los Angeles yesterday, the dew point hit almost 70 degrees.

Scientists say humidity generally becomes uncomfortable in the summer when the dew point is higher than 65.

“We do get these prolonged periods of heat, but what is unusual is the humidity,” said National Weather Service meteorologist Bryan Lewis.

So, what’s causing this mugginess?

A confluence of atmospheric forces, some hundreds or even thousands of miles away, is collecting and trapping moisture in Southern California.

“It's basically the combination of the warm ocean temperatures, as well as we've just been in the right pattern for some tropical moisture" to be sent our way, Lewis said.

Storms in the Pacific

Storms are to blame, at least in part, for the uncharacteristic humidity in the region this summer.

Two in particular have contributed to moisture levels in Southern California as they traveled across the Pacific Ocean in recent weeks.

Tropical Storm Fausto formed off of Central America earlier this month before moving off into the open ocean and moving toward Hawaii. It briefly was elevated to a Category 2 hurricane over the weekend before weakening again into a tropical storm.

Fausto is expected to continue weakening as it passes to the north of the Hawaiian Islands over the next few days.

The other, stronger storm, Hurricane Genevieve, also formed off the coast of Central America and has been moving relatively parallel to the Mexican coast, several hundred miles offshore.

Genevieve was elevated to a Category 5 hurricane on Monday.

The storms aren’t solely responsible for sending moisture hundreds of miles across the ocean.

Other weather patterns closer to home, including the system of high pressure air currently settled over the Western U.S. and the North American monsoon, siphon the tropical moisture from the storms into our region.

Thankfully, forecasters say, Hurricane Genevieve is not expected to create as much moisture as Fausto and other recent tropical storms.

Warming oceans

Forecasters also say warming ocean temperatures are adding to the humidity.

When the ocean is warmer than usual, the wind blowing inland off the water is also warmer. The warm seawater also evaporates faster, releasing more moisture into the air above it. That moisture is then carried inland by the wind.

Ocean warming is not new in Southern California, but it’s getting worse.

The region has been hit with a series of marine heatwaves over the last decade. They generally recede during the winter, but the current one has lasted for over a year. Scientists say these ocean heatwaves are likely being worsened by human-caused climate change.

But there is some short-term hope on the horizon for humidity-haters.

One, Hurricane Genevieve is not expected to pull as much moisture into our region as other recent weather patterns. And two, forecasters expect drier air to flow in from the northwest, cutting down the humidity a bit, especially inland.

That may not reach people who live along the coast, however, where the higher ocean temperatures will help keep the coastal humidity elevated, especially at night.

Los Angeles-area eviction lawyer Dennis Block has agreed to one year of probation after the California State Bar Court found he violated a court order and engaged in other misconduct.

The decision came through a stipulation — similar to a settlement agreement with the court — in which Block admitted to charging clients improper fees, representing a landlord and their tenant at the same time, signing off on an error-filled court document a junior attorney in his firm generated using ChatGPT and failing to pay court-ordered sanctions for nearly three years.

LAist first reported on these disciplinary charges in January.

Block, who runs a firm that claims to have evicted hundreds of thousands of tenants, is expected to be placed on probation for one year. He will also be required to take classes on ethics and proper handling of client funds if the State Bar Court’s recommendation is approved by the California Supreme Court.

The State Bar Court recommended Block be suspended from practicing law for one year, but allowed the suspension be stayed as long as he complies with ethics rules and his probation conditions.

David Bramante is one of the clients who reported Block to the bar. He said he paid Block $17,000 up front to work on a court motion that needed to be taken care of quickly.

“The Ellis Act work I paid for never got done,” Bramante told LAist. “And when I terminated him, his office wouldn't give me a real accounting of where the money went.”

Bramante said it was only after many months and the State Bar’s investigation that Block’s firm refunded him the money.

Three legal ethics experts told LAist the disciplinary actions the bar recommended against Block are in line with similar cases they have seen in the past.

“This is a pretty serious sanction,” Scott Cummings, a UCLA law professor who teaches legal ethics, told LAist.

Cummings said suspension and disbarment are the two highest forms of discipline given by the bar.

Even though the suspension is being stayed in this case — because Block cooperated with State Bar investigators and has had a long career without disciplinary issues — Cummings said it seems like the bar is sending a message to Block and other attorneys that they need to treat their clients’ interests and money with the highest level of care.

Still, others think the court didn’t go far enough.

Richard Zitrin, an emeritus lecturer with UC Law San Francisco, called it a “slap on the wrist" considering the level of wrongdoing in the case.

“The failure to suspend Mr. Block is letting him get away with clearly unethical conduct that harms his clients,” Zitrin told LAist.

Other clients who were not involved with the bar’s investigation also claimed they had negative experiences with Block’s firm.

Xavier Jones said he hired Block’s firm for a few months in 2025. He told LAist there were no issues at first. Then, he said he saw Block’s attorneys start coming to court unprepared for his case. He said he also felt Block was overbilling him for the firm’s services.

Block would hang up on him when he asked legal questions or about how much he was being billed, Jones said. He said there were two times the firm’s lawyers came to court without having a copy of the tenants’ lease, which he says he sent them.

“I'm paying for this, for them to show up, for them to do their back-end work,” Jones said. “It's just unprofessional, it's embarrassing, and it's costing me a lot of money.”

Jones said he stopped working with Block in November. He said he had lost about $70,000 in unpaid rent, legal fees and other costs he believes could have been avoided with proper legal assistance.

LAist reached out to Block and his attorneys this week for comment, but did not receive a response. Last month, Erin Joyce — Block’s defense attorney — told LAist that the State Bar Court’s investigation into her client was “thorough” and found “no conduct by the firm involved moral turpitude,” which had been alleged in the original charges.

A year ago at this time, the streets of Los Angeles and other American cities were the sites of highly visible, large-scale immigration raids. While those scenes have died down, immigration enforcement remains more quietly active.

Federal data show Immigration and Customs Enforcement detained more people in June, at 43,000, than in any month since January 2025. Locally, Los Angeles Police Department officials say June had the highest tally of potential unlawful conduct by federal immigration officers. The 12 incidents investigated mark the most since the department began reporting the data in March.

German Hurtado, LAPD immigration affairs liaison, said in an interview that he noticed the uptick of reported immigration enforcement incidents, but could not say what caused the increase.

In February, Mayor Karen Bass issued a directive requiring the reporting. Police commissioners approved the most recent report at their meeting Tuesday.

Hurtado said the increase seen in June might be reflective of the department’s efforts to capture more of the potential issues.

“We’re finding better ways to improve how to capture these incidents,” Hurtado said. “It could be a combination of everything, but I did see that it was a large increase.”

He said those efforts include changes in how they label calls related to federal immigration enforcement actions and adjustments to the way department computers store the information.

What’s in June’s report

Here’s how that process worked, according to the department’s report:

The LAPD first identified 45 potential federal immigration enforcement actions by searching internal reporting systems for immigration related search terms. The immigration affairs liaison determined 33 of those incidents were unrelated to immigration enforcement.

At the commission's meeting on Tuesday, Lisa Ridoutt, assistant inspector general, explained these incidents included:

• 26 notices from federal agents conducting surveillance in the area
• 2 reports of protests
• 2 medical related incidents
• 1 report of DHS agents executing a search warrant unrelated to immigration
• 1 federal task force meeting
• 1 call reporting someone believed they were pushed from behind by a federal agent. LAPD reviewed security footage and determined no crime had occurred.

The department then looked deeper into 12 enforcement incidents that qualify for reporting under Bass’ executive directive, which asks the LAPD to report when officers document or receive reports of suspected unlawful conduct by immigration officers. Two of those incidents involved an LAPD response in the field, according to the report. The department also says neither resulted in officers being on the scene for an active enforcement action.

The report states the LAPD does not know the overall number of immigration enforcement actions that happened in June.

The 12 reported incidents are a significant increase from previous months. The department reported just four incidents in May, four in April and none in March.

Hurtado said the number of incidents has increased every month since March, potentially because the department is getting better at documenting them.

“It takes a while to teach 8,700 people exactly what to do, so as we are rolling out different training, the officers are now being more observant of it, documenting it more," Hurtado said.

The increase, he added, could also stem from federal authorities communicating with LAPD more. He said federal immigration authorities have not asked LAPD for support during enforcement actions.

The backstory

For decades, the LAPD has refrained from directly enforcing immigration laws. That’s because policing experts say doing so could deter witnesses or victims from cooperating with law enforcement.

State and local laws have codified that policy in recent years and further prohibited California law enforcement from assisting in federal immigration enforcement.

The mayor issued two executive orders last year with instructions for how city departments interact with federal immigration officers.

Executive directive 17 mandates the monthly immigration reports from the LAPD and instructs officers to activate their body-worn cameras whenever they respond to potential immigration-related incidents.

Ridoutt, of the Office of Inspector General, said that while officers did activate body-worn and in-car video systems, the OIG found some recordings were not properly titled or tagged and that some videos or photos from community members were not uploaded to the department’s evidence database as required by department policy.

The Inspector General’s Office reviews the LAPD’s reports to ensure compliance with the directive. Ridoutt said the office will be releasing a more comprehensive report in October or November.

Calls for increased transparency

At previous meetings, commissioners have asked for more details about what calls for service or incident reports entail.

Hurtado said the executive directive just requires the department to release aggregate numbers.

Shiu-Ming Cheer, deputy director of immigrant and racial justice at the California Immigrant Policy Center, said the directive calls for greater transparency than what the LAPD’s monthly reports currently provide.

The June report, for example, notes that LAPD twice dispatched officers in response to a report of ICE activity, but provides no description of the department’s role once officers arrived. Cheer said the public should know whether officers were responding for crowd control, interacting with federal agents or serving some other purpose.

Cheer said the LAPD’s monthly reports should explain what happened during the incidents the department counts.

Sophia Wrench, an attorney with Public Counsel, agrees.

“A central purpose of Executive Directive 17 was to provide increased transparency and build public trust, but LAPD’s reporting month after month falls short,” she said in a statement. “The lack of information in its monthly reports only creates more confusion in the community, building greater fear and mistrust of the police.”