Keeping at-risk residents from losing their housing will be a key to solving homelessness

Preventing homelessness is a crucial piece of the puzzle for solving this problem in Los Angeles. It is easier and less costly to keep someone from becoming homeless than it is to help them out of the trauma of homelessness and find them permanent housing.

No one wants to see more people forced into the pain of homelessness. And already there isn’t nearly enough housing for the estimated 75,000 homeless people in L.A. This remains true despite efforts by the county and the city of Los Angeles to help finance the construction or purchase of housing units for homeless individuals and families.

But prevention is not as simple as it sounds. Keeping people in their homes is not as expensive as building or procuring homes for the unhoused, but prevention does require millions of dollars in funding. County officials have said prevention is key, but programs haven’t always gotten the funding they needed.

If homelessness prevention “is the last thing that is funded and the first thing that is cut when budgets get tight, we are not investing in prevention the way that we have to if we are going to end homelessness in Los Angeles and elsewhere,” said Adam Murray, the chief executive of the Inner City Law Center, a nonprofit firm on Skid Row that advocates for low-income and homeless individuals and families.

Among other services, the center helps people fight eviction proceedings. Having a lawyer dramatically increases the chances of a tenant either winning eviction proceedings or reaching a settlement with a landlord that allows the resident to stay in place.

But nearly half of people becoming homeless in California left a living arrangement where they were not the leaseholder, according to a recent study of homelessness in the state. So an eviction intervention couldn’t have directly helped them. And that underscores the challenges of homelessness prevention — finding the vulnerable people who are most at risk of homelessness, figuring out ways to direct them to prevention services (such as rental assistance) and then scaling up those services.

At a recent conference on homelessness prevention — organized by the California Policy Lab, a research institute at UCLA — agency chiefs, academics, researchers, foundation leaders and community advocates all presented ideas that had worked and hadn’t worked. (Murray was one of the panelists.)

Everyone agrees that a subsidy works. In Santa Clara County, people at risk of homelessness in 7,600 households received on average $7,000 in financial assistance. Two years later the vast majority (93%) of those residents had avoided becoming homeless.

But even where money is available for this purpose, the problem remains how to get the subsidies to those who most need them. People may not know an agency exists that can give them funding. One solution is to focus on people who go to health services or other social service offices and reach out to those who appear to be at high risk of losing their housing. Nearly every speaker at the conference noted that the two biggest risk factors are very low income and a previous experience with homelessness.

Janey Rountree, executive director of the California Policy Lab at UCLA, helped develop metrics that identify users of L.A. County services who may be vulnerable to falling into homelessness. The county’s Homeless Prevention Unit uses the model, but the formula doesn’t find everyone.

“We have developed a predictive model,” says Rountree, “but you have to be in the database.”

In Chicago, you can call 311 to request short-term financial assistance for rent and utilities. Sounds great. But not everyone in desperate straits knows this assistance even exists. And even when they do and make the call, most never get beyond the initial couple of screenings over the phone.

A sizable portion of the funds from the Measure A sales tax that Los Angeles County voters approved in November will be set aside for homelessness prevention. Having a designated fund for prevention will be good and certainly rental assistance should be prioritized. But experts will still have to figure out the most effective methods for identifying the people who need it the most.

In an effort to reach impoverished people who might lose their housing, that means targeting all the places they may go for services. That will involve healthcare providers, food banks, school administrators and others. People coming out of jails are susceptible to becoming homeless. So are youths transitioning out of foster care.

Think of it this way: It’s the equivalent of doing homeless outreach before people are homeless.