This LA County program can prevent homelessness — if it can convince people it’s not a scam

To slow the rise of homelessness, one program in Los Angeles County has been using artificial intelligence to find and offer help to people before they lose their housing.

The program has shown promise at preventing homelessness. But first, outreach workers need to convince people the help they’re offering isn’t a scam.

“We hear all the time from our clients that our program sounds too good to be true — what’s the catch?” said Dana Vanderford, head of the Homelessness Prevention Unit run by the L.A. County Department of Health Services.

The stakes are high for the prevention unit. Many policy experts have become convinced that L.A. County won’t solve its homelessness crisis by focusing only on the expensive, lengthy process of moving people from the streets into new housing.

Prevention advocates note that for all the people in L.A. who’ve been rehoused in recent years, more have become unhoused. This stark math recently helped persuade county leaders to vote against $21 million in planned budget cuts to prevention programs.

But the work of preventing homelessness is complicated. In many cases, the difference between keeping someone housed and watching them fall through the cracks comes down to a delicate human interaction — two strangers trying to establish trust in an unexpected phone call.

The art of building trust

In a Skid Row office building, Emily Gonzales-Zentgraf looked at a spreadsheet and dialed a phone number. This time, someone actually picked up.

“Hi,” Gonzales-Zentgraf said. “I'm calling from L.A. County's Department of Health Services Housing Stabilization Team. How are you doing today?”

The person on the other end said she was at a doctor’s appointment.

“OK, I'll give you a call later today,” Gonzales-Zentgraf said before making a note in her spreadsheet.

The goal was to get this person enrolled in services provided through the county’s prevention unit, a special initiative of the Department of Health Services’ Housing for Health program.

Housing for Health is now being cited as a model for the county’s new approach to funding homeless services. Last week, elected leaders voted to pull hundreds of millions of dollars in annual funding from the region’s troubled L.A. Homeless Services Authority.

The prevention unit can offer quick cash assistance for things like rent, medical care or car repairs. It also gives people six months of case management and help signing up for other county programs.

Gonzales-Zentgraf wasn’t able to sign up the person she reached on the phone for help yet. But she considered the call a success.

“Every time I'm able to have a conversation with someone, it's me building trust,” she said.

Many people eligible for help are unreachable

Outreach workers say they’re getting better at winning that trust. One strategy is to avoid the word “homeless.” They’ve found it can scare people. Instead of saying they’re with the county’s “Homelessness Prevention Unit,” they say they’re with the “Housing Stabilization Team.”

Improving the program’s contact success rate is critical. At last count, more than 75,000 people are experiencing homelessness in L.A. County. Even as thousands move into shelters and apartments each year, thousands of others become newly unhoused.

In the past, only about 21% of the people the prevention unit called ended up enrolling in the program. About half never called back at all.

“Phone numbers wouldn't work,” said Vanderford. “Voicemails would be left and not returned.”

She said the people they’re trying to reach are by nature difficult to contact. Many are sick and frequently in and out of hospitals. Some can’t afford reliable phone service. Others have been stung by past experiences with government programs.

“We've learned a lot in the last couple of years about what works in cold calling our clients, but we still get clients who hang up on us,” Vanderford said.

Dana Vanderford, associate director of homelessness prevention for L.A. County's Department of Health Services, stands in the call center where outreach workers try to establish connections with people on the brink of losing their housing.

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If calls, emails and physical mail all fail, the prevention unit will try to establish contact through a person’s medical provider. For now, the unit does not send text messages because of concerns about running afoul of federal telemarketing laws. Some hope that will change.

In a world where spam calls seemingly never cease, Vanderford said her team understands the need to patiently explain what the program is and what it offers.

“That's something that keeps us up at night,” she said. “There's some segment of eligible clients who we’re not reaching. But I think the trade off there is we know that we're reaching a group of people who have a really high level of need.”

Using AI to predict homelessness

County prevention workers know the people they’re reaching out to are at high risk of homelessness because they’re relying on a statistical model created by researchers with the University of California system’s California Policy Lab.

The model uses artificial intelligence to comb through county records on emergency room visits, psychiatric admissions, food assistance, arrests and other factors that put someone at high risk of becoming unhoused in the next 18 months.

Janey Rountree, executive director of the California Policy Lab, said the predictive model identifies people with about a 1-in-4 chance of becoming unhoused.

“What we know from the unit so far is that 90% of people complete the program and are still housed,” Rountree said. “Which is great.”

Rigorous studies on the program are still in the works. Results from a randomized control trial are expected in 2027.

Rountree said early results suggest preventing homelessness saves money in the long run. Research on the prevention unit shows that on average, it takes about $6,500 to stabilize a participant’s housing. Helping someone find new housing after they’re already living on the street tends to be much more expensive.

“Our system is trying to solve a crisis, and it does not have enough funding to do everything it needs to do,” she said. “The future, I think, is around thinking strategically around the maximum impact for dollars.”

Reaching out before people know they need help

Preventing homelessness is not as easy as it sounds. First, you need to know who is going to become unhoused. Otherwise, prevention dollars may end up going to people who — while seemingly vulnerable — were not likely to become unhoused in the first place.

Researchers say looking at eviction filings is not always a reliable way of predicting homelessness. Some renters who get evicted do become unhoused. But many do not. They might move in with family members or find cheaper housing elsewhere.

People at high risk of becoming unhoused are also likely to not be renting directly from a landlord. A 2023 UC San Francisco study found that in the months leading up to their homelessness, 49% of Californians were not lease-holders. Instead, they were chipping in on rent as a roommate or living somewhere for free.

All of this makes it extremely difficult to pinpoint who will become unhoused. Often, people don’t realize they’re on a slippery slope to homelessness. Many never think to ask for help.

Unlike programs in New York and Chicago, which rely on people calling a homelessness prevention support line and asking for aid, L.A. County’s program proactively finds people at high risk and calls them.

Research has shown the Angelenos identified by this model rarely ask for help on their own.

“We were not only finding a unique group, but we were finding a group that was more vulnerable,” Rountree said.

Armando Carrillo plays with his Pomeranian dogs, Snuggles and Elle, inside his living room in Arcadia on March 29, 2025. Enrolling in homelessness prevention services helped him secure pet food assistance through Pasadena Humane.

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He picked up a call that changed his life

Armando Carrillo was part of that unique group. He had lost his job as an after-school tutor and was close to maxing out his credit cards when he got a call last year from an unknown number.

“I ended up trying to swipe it away, and I accidentally swiped it to answer,” said Carrillo, who lives in an Arcadia apartment with his disabled mother and two siblings.

At first, Carrillo was skeptical. He said he hadn’t asked for any help avoiding homelessness. But he later realized the offer was genuine after the county mailed him a letter confirming the offer.

By enrolling in the program, Carrillo found help covering his portion of the rent, paying down his debts and feeding his family’s pets. He said getting treated for anxiety and depression was critical in helping him find a new job as a special needs aid in a local school district.

Now Carrillo has stable housing. He said he’s glad he didn’t hang up the phone that day.

“I felt very, very, very lucky that I was one of the people considered to be helped because I would have ended up homeless," he said.

Carrillo said he understands why others don’t immediately answer the phone. But he urged people who get the calls to check their voicemail, even if they don’t pick up at first.

“It's OK to be skeptical,” he said. “Especially now, with everything that's going on, a lot of scams and all that… All it takes is looking [the prevention unit] up on Google. Within 10 seconds, you know that they're a legit organization.”