Hundreds Of LA Apartments Built To Ease Homelessness Are Sitting Empty

Nearly 300 apartments built for unhoused people are sitting empty in the city of Los Angeles more than two months after being declared ready for move in, largely due to longstanding bureaucratic rules.

City data reviewed by LAist shows 274 newly constructed apartments — each funded largely by a $1.2 billion voter-approved bond measure called Proposition HHH — had yet to have a resident as of Aug. 1, despite being declared “ready to occupy” by city officials more than 60 days prior.

That number is down from 444 empty units in May and 354 in June. And it’s expected to further improve in the coming weeks and months due to waivers L.A. Mayor Karen Bass requested and recently received from federal officials to speed up the process of housing people.

About 60 of the vacant units are in Skid Row Housing Trust buildings opened years ago, in 2020 and 2021. The nonprofit trust financially imploded earlier this year — and was taken over by a court-appointed receiver – though its most serious problems centered on its century-old buildings, not the newer ones where dozens of units remain vacant.

What’s causing the problems

In interviews, local officials and service providers said the overall vacancy issues with HHH housing are fueled by federal paperwork rules, and layers of eligibility restrictions regarding who can live in particular units.

Officials say many of the vacant units have people matched to them, who are still going through the process of getting their paperwork together. In some cases, people have been living outdoors for months as their assigned apartment sits empty.

Bass calls the vacant units one of her biggest frustrations as she tries to address homelessness. Her main homelessness program, Inside Safe, has sheltered more than 1,400 people in motel rooms but has only been able to move 8% of people into long-term housing. The program is estimated to have cost $32 million through the end of June, mainly on motel rooms and service providers.

“You better believe it's frustrating to me, because I don't want people to languish in motels,” Bass told LAist in an interview about the vacant units.

“I want people to be able to be mainstreamed back into the housing market. I want them to be a part of the workforce. I want them to be city employees, since we have so many vacancies. I don't want them living a life in a motel room. And then, yes, [the motels are] expensive,” she added.

“It is untenable to have [motels] become the city's system of interim housing,” Bass said. “This has to be a temporary system. And the only way to make it temporary is to move people…out of these motels.”

The apartments sit empty as L.A.’s latest homeless count, conducted in January, shows nearly 33,000 people are living outdoors without shelter.

Since taking office as mayor in December, Bass has taken on homelessness as her top issue, but is grappling with longstanding shortages of housing and case management staff. And many homeless programs in L.A. are provided by the federal and county governments. The 274 vacant units are overseen by the city.

Progress expected to speed up

In recent days and weeks, federal officials at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) have granted a series of waivers — after repeated requests by Bass — that are expected to speed up the process of filling up the units.

One of those waivers, which LAist was the first to report Monday, will allow people to move into housing first and gather their income documentation like bank statements and tax forms later — eliminating a key barrier that’s kept units vacant.

HUD approved another set of waivers in mid July that lift social security numbers and proof of disability as requirements before moving in.

After HUD previously rejected the waivers earlier this year, Bass requested them again and appealed directly to HUD’s top official, Secretary Marcia Fudge.

Va Lecia Adams Kellum, who leads the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA), called HUD’s decision this week “a game changer.” LAHSA oversees the nonprofit service providers that help people qualify for housing.

“People experiencing homelessness will be able to move into housing faster and vacant units will be filled more quickly,” she said.

The waivers to let people move in and then sort out paperwork are collectively known as “presumptive eligibility” — meaning people self-certify they are eligible without needing to prove it before being allowed access to housing. Adams Kellum previously told LAist they would be the single most helpful policy change to get unhoused Angelenos housed.

“This is a waiver that, in the past, hasn't typically been granted,” said Richard Monocchio, a high-ranking HUD executive who oversees all housing subsidies in the country, in an LAist interview this week where he announced he was approving the income proof waiver.

“But the way I looked at it was, in light of the seriousness of the issue — and the city and the housing authorities requested to please take another look at that particular waiver request — I decided it was in the best interest of the city of L.A., and within federal purview.”

Complicated rules and paperwork

Officials also told LAist one of the challenges with the HHH units was the various layers of eligibility rules and extra applications people have to submit because the buildings were built with multiple funding streams — like federal and state dollars, in addition to the city money.

The complex funding structures used to construct the buildings allowed more units to be built, but also created a maze of extra restrictions, rules and paperwork requirements for people to move in.

As eligibility requirements stack, it becomes a challenge to find people who match the prerequisites.

“A lot of this is just the nature of working within a system that involves so many different partners – each having their own documentation, their own processes, their own qualifying conditions to use their money,” said Stephanie Klasky-Gamer, president and CEO of L.A. Family Housing, one of the biggest homeless service providers in L.A.

“There's just so many different qualifying conditions,” she said.

One example she cited is a HHH-funded apartment complex for young adults who recently aged out of the foster care system, where the funding requires 10% of the units be for people with certain disabilities that are more common for older people.

“It was very hard to lease up that building,” she said.

“So, it seems like a silly detail, but you add up all of those details, and it starts having an impact.”

LAHSA has also been changing its practices to speed up the process — like matching multiple people to a unit.

“The mayor has taught us all, don't be afraid to call out what's not working or any bottleneck and own that so we can fix it,” Adams Kellum told LAist in an interview.

“We have identified the bottlenecks. We're owning whatever part of that is us” and working to fix them quickly, said Adams Kellum, who started at LAHSA in April.

The results of Prop. HHH so far

While there are hundreds of vacancies, city data show 2,868 other units funded by HHH were occupied as of Aug. 1.

Another 3,500 units are listed as under construction and 2,200 in the design phase, for a total of around 8,600 apartments finished or planned under HHH. That’s 1,400 short of the 10,000 units the ballot measure promised within ten years when it went before voters back in 2016.

Mayor says transparency problems remain

Among the units that have been filled, the mayor says she’s running into transparency problems with knowing who gets to move in to the new housing, how those decisions are getting made – and even who is making the decisions.

“Who are they? And where did they come from? Were any of them from Inside Safe? Were any of them from a tiny home, bridge home?” Bass told LAist, saying she wants reforms for more transparency.

“That's not in the data that they've given me. It's just numbers…by building. But I want to know who they are,” she said. “It's very hard to determine who's going where, who's making the decision.”

Councilmember Nithya Raman told LAist it’s important that the city to use the resources it has — including the HHH units — in order to strengthen its ask for more federal housing dollars.

“We need more [housing vouchers]. But in order to really make the case for it, we have to ensure we’re fully utilizing what we have,” said Raman, who chairs the city council’s housing and homelessness committee.

Clearing hurdles

Sarah Dusseault, who co-chaired L.A. County’s Blue Ribbon Commission on Homelessness, said it’s essential to keep clearing through bureaucratic hurdles.

“It’s critical for us to be thinking, how can we make it easy….and that’s what Mayor Bass has been lifting up and pushing on,” she said.

“We’ve got to inject hope back into the system, by getting rid of red tape.”

While filling the vacancies is important, much more housing capacity is needed to solve homelessness, noted Klasky-Gamer, the L.A. Family Housing leader.

“Until we really do that – produce [housing] at the scale that the crisis demands – filling up all the vacancies is not going to end homelessness,” she said.

“That's the key part of this equation to end homelessness in people's lives.”