Home For Good Funding Collaborative to House 1,000

LOS ANGELES, Aug. 16, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- The Home For Good Funders Collaborative today announced an unprecedented commitment of over $105 million in resources allocated in coordination across public and private systems to help end chronic homelessness.  These resources will provide permanent supportive housing to over 1,000 chronically homeless individuals throughout the Los Angeles region, including veterans, individuals, youth, and families.  The $105 million in resources include housing vouchers (calculated over 15 years), capital funds and health, mental health and substance abuse services.

"This is the Home For Good blueprint come to life," says Jerry Neuman, Co-Chair of the Home For Good Task Force.  "Foundations and businesses provided new funds, those funds were leveraged with new and existing public resources and the combined resources are carefully focused on the greatest need, moving chronically homeless people from streets to homes.  And the process will generate significant savings for our systems."

Research has demonstrated substantial cost savings permanent supportive housing yields.  Studies consistently find that placing chronically homeless people in permanent supportive housing creates a cost savings of over 40%.  The 2012 Los Angeles County evaluation of Project 50 concluded that for each chronically homeless person placed in permanent supportive housing, there are savings of $4,774 over two years measured against the costs of leaving those people on the streets.

The awarded funds will provide housing and services for chronically homeless people using existing permanent supportive units as current tenants move on to other housing, working with landlords to use Section 8 vouchers in market-rate housing, and developing new units of permanent supportive housing.  The awards will generate this housing across the Los Angeles region, including the San Fernando and Antelope Valleys, Hollywood, South Los Angeles, Boyle Heights, Pasadena, Santa Monica, and Skid Row in downtown Los Angeles.

Elise Buik, President & CEO of United Way of Greater Los Angeles, which leads the Collaborative and with the L.A. Area Chamber of Commerce created the Business Leaders Task Force on Homelessness, says, "The Collaborative reaches dozens of communities throughout the region working to end homelessness because its members exercised extraordinary diligence and focused on measureable results.  Their work is a clear signal to the Los Angeles community that investing in an end to chronic and veteran homelessness is good for our communities in every respect – it not only reduces the strain on severely limited government resources, it makes our metropolitan area significantly more desirable as a place to live and work and spend. 

"The remarkable partnership between the public, private, and nonprofit sectors created through this Collaborative is exactly the kind of innovation and collaboration we need to realize this goal.  We look forward to broadening the Collaborative to welcome additional corporate, public and private funders in years to come."

The Home For Good Funders Collaborative is the first of its kind in Los Angeles.  A partnership of 24 public and private funders, the Collaborative began with a seed grant from the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation.  In this, its first year, the Collaborative pooled and aligned $5 million in donated philanthropic and business funds.  These $5 million in private funds leveraged public sector commitments of over $55 million, with an additional $45 million in public funds from the City and County of Los Angeles and the City of Pasadena. 

All the funds were made available through an innovative new application process.  The Collaborative enabled dozens of organizations addressing homelessness to submit a single application rather than several.  Where multiple applications to create housing with services often result in agency-by-agency waiting periods which can extend to years, the Collaborative award process took just over 7 months.

Steven M. Hilton, President and CEO of the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation, says, "We applaud our partners from the private and public sectors for coming together to combine our collective resources and efforts to help those most in need.  Homelessness is a problem too big for each of us to solve on our own; only together can we hope to improve the situation in Los Angeles. 

"The remarkable partnership between the public, private, and nonprofit sectors created through this Collaborative is exactly the kind of innovation and collaboration we need to realize this goal.  We look forward to broadening the Collaborative to welcome additional corporate, public and private funders in years to come." 

Collaborative partners from both City and County agencies praise the coordinated approach the Home For Good enterprise has taken.

Doug Guthrie, President & CEO of the Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles, says, "The Home For Good collaborative represents the best public-private partnership around our common goal of housing the chronically homeless.  It takes careful alignment of all of our resources – Housing Authority subsidies, County health services and private foundation funding for critical gaps – to successfully house this population, and Home For Good provides Los Angeles with a common framework to get the job done."

Mitch Katz, Director of the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services, says, "Through participation in the Collaborative the health department has been able to align resources with other funders and greatly expand access to permanent supportive housing for patients who have a chronic illness or disability and are homeless.  Housing these patients has been shown to reduce public costs, especially in health care."

The Home For Good campaign to end chronic and veteran homelessness in greater L.A. in five years is now in the middle of its second year of implementation.  The Home For Good blueprint, as well as quarterly progress reports, are available at www.homeforgoodla.org.

SOURCE Home For Good