City council to vote on expanding pilot to house homeless

The L.A. City Council Wednesday is slated to vote on expanding a model for rapidly housing homeless individuals. 

If passed, any city-funding towards housing homeless would come with a requirement that providers participate in "coordinated entry"--a regional database that collects information on homeless individuals and ranks them for housing based on their need level.

“We’re really giving the people who need a service the right type of service” said Councilman Jose Huizar, who authored the measure. “One thing we need to ensure is that whatever city funds are being given out are being used most efficiently and effectively.”

Identifying needs of homeless individuals and matching them up with appropriate housing has been a struggle in Los Angeles, as well as across the nation.

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Housing developments and programs that involve housing typically target specific types of people—whether homeless families, veterans, domestic violence victims, or other specific groups.

Homeless individuals looking for a place to live often apply to live in any property they come across—regardless of their eligibility. That can be a waste of energy for them, and can lead to not the right people getting the right kind of housing, Peter Lynn, head of the Los Angeles Homeless Authority told the city council in February.

Lynn used the example of a new housing development that opened up on Skid Row right before the coordinated entry system started, on a pilot basis, in 2013. The group that ran it did what providers traditionally do—they posted notices and started taking applications.

“There were lines around the block for days,” he said, and many of the most vulnerable who came to apply couldn’t stand in line for long enough, so they lost their spots.

Then coordinated entry started. Through that system, everyone applying for housing anywhere that’s participating in the program fills out the same application and all the information goes into a coordinated system. That system identifies a person’s level of vulnerability. It prioritizes those with the highest needs, and also matches people who fall into specific groups with housing that’s geared toward them.

Looking back at that new development that went up, Lynn said it turned out 90 percent of those who ended up getting housed there “were in the lowest service need prioritization category.”

Which means they were in housing with expensive services that they didn’t necessarily need.

“So it was a real world experiment in what happens when you allow the waitlist process to dictate who gets access to the units,” he said.

L.A. County is also beginning to require that its providers make use of the system.

Lynn told the councilmembers coordinated entry is a practical tool and also a new philosophy.

"There's a tremendous shift in the way people get access towards the most likely to die on our streets,” he said.