Twenty people who used to survive by living in RVs in an unincorporated part of South Los Angeles Gardena each moved into their own apartment just in time for Thanksgiving, with help from LA County’s Pathway Home program.
Their new home is a 4-story modular apartment building being master-leased by the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA) with funding provided by LA County and the largest local Medi-Cal managed care plans, L.A. Care Health Plan and Health Net, through the Housing and Homelessness Incentive Program (HHIP).
“Meeting with residents from our recent RV encampment resolution in West Rancho Dominguez/ East Gardena for an early Thanksgiving dinner as they received the keys to their permanent home was a joy,” said Supervisor Holly Mitchell. “They will have access to on-site services available through St. Joseph Center to assist them with accessing workforce opportunities, mental health, and substance abuse services, and more.”
“Connecting people to permanent housing with the services they need to stay housed is a critical step in the County’s Pathway Home initiative,” she added. “It is only possible with partnerships and Measure H funding. I want to thank the County’s Homelessness Initiative and all the County departments involved in Pathway Home, along with LAHSA, St. Joseph Center, LA Care, LA Healthnet, and A to Z Enterprises. We must continue to work to make more days like this possible urgently.”
https://abc7.com/rvs-los-angeles-county-east-gardena-west-rancho-dominguez/14089491/
On August 22 -24, LA County conducted a Pathway Home encampment resolution focused on RVs, or recreational vehicles, in unincorporated East Gardena and West Rancho Dominguez. Click to watch the video of that operation.
Pathway Home helped 58 individuals move into hotels and other interim housing managed by the County’s contracted service provider, St. Joseph Center. It also took 30 unsafe, inoperable, and otherwise unlivable RVs off the streets.
To facilitate their transition to permanent housing, the County provided Pathway Home participants with a range of supportive services, as well as housing navigation and time-limited rental subsidies.
On November 20 and 21, twenty of the participants moved into permanent housing, an apartment complex in Florence-Firestone master leased by LAHSA.
https://ktla.com/news/local-news/formerly-unhoused-angelenos-thankful-for-new-permanent-home/
With master leasing, the homeless services system can secure apartments on the private rental market and lease them directly to people experiencing homelessness, including those with tenant based rental subsidies who struggle to lease up with traditional landlords.
To cover the non-rental costs of master leasing, LA County is working with L.A. Care and Health Net through California’s Housing and Homelessness Incentive Program (HHIP), which the state launched with matching funds from the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA). HHIP allows managed care plans to earn incentive funds for making progress in addressing homelessness and housing insecurity as social determinants of health within their community.
In October 2023, L.A. Care approved $80 million and Health Net, $34 million, in HHIP funding for LA County after the Board of Supervisors declared a local homelessness emergency in January 2023. Of that combined total of $114 million, about half will be administered by the LA County Homeless Initiative to fund HHIP Unit Acquisition (HHIP UA) strategies. This could include leasing entire apartment complexes, expanding opportunities for shared housing, providing additional support to landlords, and more. Leases could run from three to 10 years.
