The Los Angeles Homeless Service Authority (LAHSA) recently published the results of this year’s Greater Los Angeles Homeless Count, a point-in-time census of the number of people experiencing homelessness in both the city and county. In the city of Los Angeles alone, there are 45,252 people experiencing homelessness at any given time, with about 16,000 being sheltered and almost 30,000 unsheltered. The good news: The estimate shows a 2.2% drop compared to last year’s count and there’s been an increase in permanent housing placements. The bad news: The numbers are still higher than they were pre-pandemic.
A new public-private partnership is looking to make a difference. In April, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass partnered with philanthropic funders to launch LA4LA, which seeks to address homelessness in the city by opening up affordable housing options at scale and speed. The partnership is looking to invest to unlock housing in transit-oriented communities, convert large-scale vacant and underutilized properties, and leverage new financial opportunities for all types of housing. LA4LA launched with seed funding from the California Community Foundation (CCF) and the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation.
“[Mayor Bass] announced this initiative… building on the momentum that she’s created to bring focus on homelessness, to create accountability and to move people from the street into temporary housing. This takes it to the next level,” said Miguel A. Santana, president and CEO of the California Community Foundation, where LA4LA is housed. “This is about identifying new solutions to build the network of affordable housing in a faster way, in a quicker way than the traditional model of affordable housing to build on the toolkit of solutions to this problem.”
Only four months after its launch, LA4LA has completed its first housing project. Located in the Koreatown neighborhood of Los Angeles, the Eaves is a seven-story, 58-unit building that will house low-income, formerly homeless tenants. The project was originally developed by Treehouse Community LA and was supposed to be mixed-affordability, but due to rising material costs and high interest rates, the project stalled.
LA4LA was able to secure $2.9 million in grant funding and a low-interest loan from philanthropic partners, including Jeffrey and Marilyn Katzenberg, Stephen J. Cloobeck, the California Community Foundation and the Hilton Foundation. In exchange for filling the financial gap that would result, the developer agreed to convert all 58 units into affordable, permanent supportive housing.
“Finding and securing housing is really, really difficult,” donor Jeffrey Katzenberg said. “But I love this idea of public-private philanthropy to take advantage of these unique opportunities to take over, purchase [and] finish existing housing. And that’s the thing that I thought was particularly smart and strategic on the mayor’s part, of recognizing that there are unfinished or vacant buildings that have… stalled. And so the opportunity [is] to be able to come in and take these over at a very reasonable, affordable price and convert them into housing for [the] homeless.”
Coming together
On her first day in office in December 2022, Mayor Bass declared a state of emergency on homelessness and issued Executive Directive One, which allowed her to do several things to aid unhoused people in the city. One, it gave her the power to lift the rules and regulations that slow down and prevent the building of permanent and temporary housing for the unhoused (the time needed to obtain permits for affordable housing, for example, shrunk from between six to nine months to about 37 days). Two, it expedited contracts that prioritized bringing unhoused people inside; and three, it allowed the city to procure land, properties and rooms to house people in need.
LA4LA’s lead strategist, Sarah Dusseault, who worked alongside the mayor during her transition on the emergency declaration and the first few executive directives, said that the mayor convened her and several people to discuss how they could ensure construction of affordable housing units for people who had previously experienced homelessness.
“All of us pretty quickly pointed to the high interest rates, the lack of access to capital and the need to harness the tools of philanthropy to really focus on getting affordable units online quickly,” Dusseault said.
When organizing the partnership, Bass reached out to Santana at the California Community Foundation to see if it would be willing to house LA4LA. This is not uncommon: Across the nation, there are several other similar initiatives housed at community foundations, including the Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta.
“What we do is we connect donors with opportunities to fill in the gaps in efforts to convert market-rate housing into 100% affordable and unlock the housing that has been entitled under [Mayor Bass’] Executive Directive One, which fast tracks the developing of housing — affordable housing in particular — and taking projects from being entitled to actually getting them financed,” Santana said.
The Hilton Foundation’s president and CEO, Peter Laugharn, said the funder, which dedicates about $35 million a year to its homelessness program, was excited to contribute to LA4LA. Laugharn added that although only a small percentage of homelessness funding comes from philanthropy, philanthropy can help “expand that pie,” help the government use its funding well, and come in either where the government can’t or where it’s slower.
“It’s solidarity. It’s our locking arms with the mayor and showing that we really want to support the efforts that the city and the county are making and help them succeed, and I think LA4LA is a major vehicle,” Launharn said.
Soon after LA4LA’s launch, Eaves developer Prophet Walker, who had heard about the partnership, brought the Eaves project to CCF. The Eaves was converted from a mixed-affordability residential building to permanent supportive housing for Angelenos who have been previously homeless and brought indoors through the mayor’s Inside Safe program. LA4LA also facilitated a lease through LAHSA’s Master Leasing strategy, which means that LAHSA will serve as the building’s landlord. This removes many of the barriers that prevent unhoused people from finding permanent homes and allows tenants to move in faster. It’s also beneficial to the building’s owner, since the master lease provides guaranteed tenants and rents.
The 24,000-square-foot Eaves was developed at about half the average cost for comparable units, Santana said — a notable win, considering the sky-high per-unit price tags permanent housing often involves. Each unit has its own living quarters and bathroom, but there are common spaces where residents can come together to cook, convene and heal. In addition, tenants will receive onsite case management and support from People Assisting the Homeless (PATH).
Building momentum
The Eaves serves as an example of government and philanthropy working together to tackle homelessness on the local level — a popular form of philanthropic intervention right now, in the housing space and elsewhere. Philanthropy, Dusseault argued, can take risks in ways that private capital can’t or won’t. By testing different tools and experimenting, it can show capital markets and other philanthropic institutions that it’s possible to invest in innovation and bring more housing units online and at scale.
“I think the approach really demonstrates that the solution to the housing crisis requires an all-hands-on-deck strategy. There is a role for philanthropy, there is a role for private individuals, and there’s a role for government, and it’s taking the best of each and finding a path forward,” Santana said.
According to Dusseault, about 20,000 units have been permitted through Executive Directive One and another 40,000 units have been permitted through other land use initiatives, units that have yet to be built. LA4LA has already identified projects that it can move forward with.
“We’re really trying to build on the momentum that the mayor created, both through the emergency declaration and then through her directives, that we think this is solvable, that we actually through innovation, can really tackle this problem,” Dusseault said. “We can turn the tide. We can create solutions that bring people inside. So we really want to build on that momentum and bring everyone in.”
LA4LA is not a solution to the root causes of homelessness, but, Katzenberg said, getting people housed will help “solve many of the challenges and complexities around the homelessness population.”
“First thing you do is get a roof over their head and get them into a safe place, and then all the other things can happen from there — mental health, drug addiction, all of these things which add to the complications of bringing these people back into productive places in our city, it all starts with putting a roof over their head,” Katzenberg said.
“People think that homelessness is a daunting challenge — and it is — but it’s totally solvable,” Laugharn at Hilton said. “We know exactly how housing works. We know that the support of housing is what is needed. We know how to get people housed. And we are tackling with great energy this question of helping people not become homeless to begin with. And so our goal is [that] when we’re talking to our children and our grandchildren, we can tell them about this thing called homelessness that used to exist but no longer does, and L.A. can get there.”
