To the editor: Elevated accountability for interim housing outcomes is important, however — as Margot Kushel notes on this article — interim housing can’t reach a system with out ample pathways to reasonably priced and supportive housing, particularly for folks with continual and behavioral well being wants (“In L.A. County, many homeless people enter shelters, only to end up back on the streets,” April 14).
Though interim housing has helped Los Angeles scale back unsheltered homelessness and reply to crises, it stays a short lived intervention that can’t resolve homelessness with out exits to supportive housing. Folks exit homelessness solely once they can transfer into reasonably priced housing. For folks with advanced well being wants, evidence summarized by the Nationwide Middle for Housing + Well being reveals how Los Angeles and different communities efficiently applied supportive housing to interrupt the homelessness cycle whereas lowering reliance on pricey disaster providers.
Emphasizing shelter and transitional housing with out corresponding funding in reasonably priced and supportive properties dangers rising returns to homelessness.
We must always enhance interim housing — however lasting progress is determined by sustained funding in reasonably priced and supportive housing that efficiently addresses homelessness, reasonably than merely managing it.
David Howden, Los Angeles
The author is director of the Corp. for Supportive Housing Los Angeles.
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To the editor: I recognize workers author Andrew Khouri’s piece acknowledging the very actual drawback of individuals bouncing out of shelters and different interim housing.
On the person degree, there are, as this text summarizes, many causes for this. But the tenor and focus of the piece appears responsible service suppliers and the extremely susceptible folks they help. This misses the plain level: lack of housing choices.
Susceptible people, like most of us, want and deserve stability and respite the place they dwell. Service suppliers know that the time-consuming seek for non permanent, interim and everlasting placement is a nightmare. There may be merely not sufficient.
The issue is primary provide and demand. That is the place the “main reset” is required and has been wanted for many years in our communities and throughout our nation.
Julie Rusk, Santa Monica
