Los Angeles County leaders approved a new $908 million annual homelessness budget this week, preserving a small chunk — about 2% — for programs that aim to stop people from becoming homeless in the first place.
That decision by the county’s Board of Supervisors reversed some planned budget cuts to homelessness prevention programs, but they still voted to eliminate other related funding. As a result, prevention advocates say, many people at risk of losing their housing could struggle to get legal help.
The fraught debate over balancing the budget comes shortly after L.A. County voters decided to double a sales tax that funds homeless services.
Despite the passage of Measure A in November, a spokesperson with the county’s Homeless Initiative told LAist that lower sales tax revenue from weakening consumer spending and the loss of one-time state funds have led to “difficult recommendations in this year’s budgeting process.”
The county’s budget proposal originally included $21 million in cuts to homelessness prevention efforts. That came as a surprise to some homeless service providers and elected leaders.
Why lawmakers want to keep funding prevention
There is a growing consensus among experts that L.A. will not solve its homelessness crisis only by moving people from the streets into shelters and apartments. They say as long as more people keep falling into homelessness, the number of people living on the streets will not go down.
Members of the county Board of Supervisors seemed to acknowledge that reality Tuesday, when they argued that prevention programs need to be preserved.
“ This board has consistently said that it's always more cost-effective to keep people in the housing that they're already in,” said Supervisor Lindsey Horvath. “That's really what prevention is about.”
The board voted to continue funding prevention efforts, as well as other programs specifically for youth exiting foster care, by up to $26 million. But reversing those cuts will require making cuts to other parts of the budget. The Board of Supervisors only identified $5 million in cuts to a housing acquisition program. They’ll have to find other cuts in order to restore prevention funds.
The next step will come April 1, when L.A. County Homeless Initiative officials must report back to the Board of Supervisors about plans for new cuts to other parts of the budget.
Some programs are still on the chopping block
One cut still moving forward is a $3 million elimination for legal services that help people fight evictions, resolve disputes with landlords, fix their credit and expunge their criminal records.
Mahdi Manji, a policy director with the Inner City Law Center, said that although it was encouraging to see county leaders restore some prevention funding, the current budget eliminates funding for his organization’s Lawyers Preventing and Ending Homelessness Program.
“Unfortunately, it is likely that this program will cease to exist post July without additional support,” Manji said in an email to LAist.
Prevention takes many forms. Other providers can offer clients rental assistance, or help fixing a car they need to get to work. The Inner City Law Center focuses on providing lawyers to help renters fight evictions and other housing crises.
Attorney Mary Boyd said she and other Inner City Law Center lawyers are now helping people who lost income due to January’s wildfires.
“While there are some protections in L.A. County, they can't catch everything,” Boyd said. “So we're there to kind of stand in the gap.”
Boyd said lawyers can also help negotiate payments for overdue rent and craft settlements that ensure landlords will not put an eviction on someone’s record. She said this approach ends up saving the county money because once someone gets evicted, it becomes much harder and more expensive to help them find new housing.
Helping renters thrive
People who have received prevention aid and legal assistance told LAist the help wasn’t just a band-aid. They said it helped them get back on their feet, able to pay rent again.
One Inner City Law Center client named Tiffany lost her job during the pandemic. She said despite filing new job applications constantly, she couldn’t find work — and her application for unemployment benefits took five months to be approved.
She fell behind on rent, and said she was getting eviction notices when she finally connected with Boyd.
Tiffany said after Boyd worked out a deal with her landlord to cover her back rent and stay housed, she was able to find a new job in nonprofit administration.
“I'm in a place where I'm thriving again,” she said. “But had I not survived long enough to get here, that would have been the end of my story.”
LAist is not using Tiffany’s full name because she doesn’t want to jeopardize her housing in the future. She said if she hadn’t received assistance at the right time, she believes she would have become unhoused.
Tiffany said she remembered thinking: “If I don't get some sort of help, I'm going to die on the street. ... Funding programs like the Inner City Law Center is so important and paramount in keeping people alive.”
Will a new agency take up the mantle of prevention?
County homelessness officials say prevention efforts were never going to be phased out completely. They said prevention aid is built into other programs, and they point to the new L.A. County Affordable Housing Solutions Agency, or LACAHSA, which is tasked with funding its own prevention efforts.
Board chair Rex Richardson, who is also the mayor of Long Beach, told LAist the affordable housing agency is required under Measure A to spend most of its budget on producing new housing. But it will also pay for things like eviction defense and rent relief.
However, Richardson said the agency was not intending to duplicate programs previously funded by the county. Before this week’s budget vote, he worried the agency could struggle to reach its goal of reducing homelessness inflows by 20% if the county cut its prevention budget.
“What voters voted for with Measure A was more of a comprehensive prevention strategy, not back-filling budget cuts,” Richardson said in an interview with LAist. “Now isn't the time to go backward. Now's the time to lean in and we all focus on prevention.”
Richardson said he was encouraged that county supervisors voted this week to restore prevention funding.
Restoring prevention means finding cuts elsewhere
But now, county homelessness officials will have to make up the difference by finding cuts to other homeless services.
Boyd, the Inner City Law Center attorney, said it is possible that future LACAHSA funding could support her organization’s prevention work — but that is by no means guaranteed.
“This just leaves us with question marks, which makes it difficult for us to figure out whether we can continue to serve clients,” Boyd said.
Sheelah, another Inner City Law Center client who did not want to use her full name in this article, said the program helped her avoid an eviction after she fled to L.A. from an abusive relationship in another part of California.
“There are good people, hard-working people, who do need help at some point,” Sheelah said. “Other people deserve that as well, just as I did. Taking that away, you could be stopping a very productive family or person becoming part of Los Angeles.”
