Skid Row Housing Trust: Homes for the Homeless

Homes for the Homeless

By Rohan Venkataramakrishnan - Los Angeles - Oct. 23, 2009

As it approaches its 20th Anniversary, the Skid Row Housing Trust is learning that even two decades of expertise does not guarantee success in the face of an economic downturn.

With 1,400 apartments spread over 22 buildings across Downtown Los Angeles, SRHT is committed to solving the city's problem of chronic homelessness by offering free, permanent housing in addition to support services. It has seen a remarkable amount of success with its various buildings over the past 20 years - including opening two more this year - but is presently struggling to find affordable housing and funding sources for new projects.

The trust's most recent project, the New Carver Apartments (above), opened on September 24. The building, named after an affordable housing hotel on Skid Row that was recently demolished, offers 97 apartments for disabled, homeless tenants.

Designed by Michael Maltzan, who had previously designed two other buildings for the trust, the New Carver is built with the hope of providing the best possible atmosphere for its tenants, considering the surrounding enviroment. With a distinctive outside shape and carefully planned interior angles, the New Carver seeks to minimize the noise from outside — especially the noise generated from the freeway that runs by the building. Smaller quirks in the building's design — a green patch that could become a communal garden; a sky deck; a large, uncovered central courtyard — add to the New Carver's appeal.

The trust is already leasing apartments on a first-come, first-serve basis. Applicants will have to be certified as homeless, as well as prove some sort of disability, and if they have a job, are required to turn in 30 percent of their wages. Once registered as a tenant in the building, the housing is permanent, and residents will have access to a number of support services — from medical case management to job counseling — in addition to the free housing.

For more on the New Carver, see "New Carver Apartments: Quality Housing" below.

SRHT: Phasing Out Chronic Homelessness

First Phase: 1989-1999

In 1989, the trust began as a basic nonprofit organization offering permanent housing to homeless people in Los Angeles. It focused on revamping old, crumbling hotels that had been used to provide affordable housing, and concentrated its efforts on homeless people with disabilities; those who most needed the help of a permanent home. Over time though, members of the trust realized a number of factors - mental problems, joblessness, lack of food, addictions - were making their tenants return to the streets.

Second Phase: 1999 - 2003

As a result, about 10 years ago, SRHT began working with other local organizations to refer tenants to a number of support services in the area. Starting with mental health counseling and individual case management from groups like the United Way of Greater Los Angeles, the trust expanded their outside referrals to include career counseling and rehabilitation services. Their experience with these programs proved that tenants were more likely to be successful and to stay off the streets.

Third Phase: 2003 - Present

And so, only a few years ago, the trust began integrating support services along with its buildings. Structures like the recently-opened New Carver Apartments and Abbey Apartments include individual case management and mental disability support for every tenant, at no extra cost. But, with the economic downturn and a slow drying up of resources, the ability to successfully expand on this model is taking some time, with only one project expected to break ground before the end of the year.

Hybrid Model: Saving Money with Free Housing

For years the Skid Row Housing Trust has claimed its efforts to provide quality, permanent housing to homeless is the only way to solve chronic homelessness, and is much more preferable than having people live on the streets.

Now, a study commissioned by the United Way of Greater Los Angeles has confirmed the trust's claims, showing that taxpayers spend up to $20,000 more in a two-year period for every homeless person living on the streets, because of the various public services the transient population is likely to use.

"What's been found is that people who are homeless in supportive housing than on the streets because otherwise they go into the ER, and they get arrested for sleeping on the sidewalk, so they go to jail, and they go to detox," said Molly Rysman, director of special projects at SRHT. "So they use all these public services, whereas once they move into housing the costs are much cheaper. "

The trust also promotes it's 'hybrid model' of permanent housing, where tenants are offered a number of on-site support services to help them deal with chronic homelessness and lessen the chances of a return to the streets. The process of accepting tenants to their buildings is also based off of this expectation that the services are as much a part of the deal as the free housing.

"We really want to get people in who need our help the most, so we try to screen-in, rather than screen-out," Rysman said. "People with mental health issues, people with drug issues, people with chronic health conditions, those are the folks we are going after, so we go through an educational marketing process in the community to say 'please, give us the most vulnerable people.'"

But, while they've been quite successful in getting funding for their various buildings across downtown, getting money for this 'hybrid' is not proving to be as easy.

"There is no funding process, as such, for services, so it's sort of a catch-as-catch-can process. Then you're building a property there are a ton of funding sources to put in applications and get money for, but with services there's nothing like it," Rysman said."I don't think our funding sources have caught up with the fact that this is a really effective way of ending homelessness."

For a while in 2008, the trust was even unable to depend on its major source of property - through tax credits for businesses - but they were able to find the funding for their ongoing projects once stimulus funds pushed more money into the market. Still, the ability of the trust and other similar organizations to even start new projects to combat homelessness has been severely impacted.

"Everybody's pipeline is slowing down to a crawl," Rysman said. "In a period of about 14 months, we have three buildings opening, but in the next 14 months we'll have probably zero buildings."

Rysman said the trust is optimistic because they know their 'hybrid model' is the solution that works, and they have enough support within the community to be able to survive the downturn, even if its overall progress slows down.

"Even though there's not a lot of funding, there's a lot of interest in supportive housing," she said. "So we're constantly meeting with elected officials and government agencies and private vendors all the time, who really want to understand this model and figure out how we can do more of it. So we're really confident that there will be an enviroment when we can build a substantial amount of housing in the future, we're just going through a little slowdown right now."

Additional Links

The New Carver Apartments: Quality Housing for the Homeless