Home First Enriched Services and Community Building

Affordable housing and homelessness

Expand existing project, program, or initiative (expanding and continuing ongoing, successful work)

HW is one of Los Angeles’ most effective permanent supportive housing providers, supporting over 800 participants in PSH with a 93% rate of housing retention success. HW developed Housing For Health, the county's primary intervention for people experiencing homelessness, and has been recognized nationally for innovations now considered best practice. New Measure H/HHH affordable housing developments are being built in under-resourced communities of color, concentrating poverty and high-need populations in areas that already have significant service gaps and housing inequity. One new development has already had a murder resulting from a mental health crisis. Housing Works has developed a scalable model for the delivery of culturally responsive, customizable on-site services and community-building activities that connect residents with each others and with their neighbors. Neighborhood and Built Community is one of the social determinants of health predicting public health outcomes.

HW has developed an Enriched Services model to build community with a goal of increasing resident health, engagement in services, quality of life, safety and long-term housing retention.
Housing Works is in the process of formalizing its Enriched Services Program for scale at new developments throughout the city and county. Our goal is to provide each development we serve with an on-site Enriched Services Coordinator who will create a culturally-relevant program of activities, supports and community-building activities developed in partnership with residents. These will include health clinics, support groups, 12-Step Meetings, cultural celebrations, arts, community gardens, a variety of workshops and classes, food distribution events, activities and outings and gatherings that include the surrounding community.
Over the next 18 months, we will lease-up and provide ongoing services at 12 new Measure H/HHH-funded developments with 800 units of housing. The proposed project will build HW’s capacity to scale Enriched Services across new developments, including creating program protocols, convening and training Enriched Service Coordinators, tracking outcomes data and ensuring quality control and cultural relevance across sites. Enriched Services are the human face of Housing First, ensuring people are not just housed but truly welcomed and engaged as valued members of a community.
These efforts will leverage new developments in a hub-and-spoke model for community and wellness.

Los Angeles will be different if its historic investment in affordable housing development yields decreased homelessness, increased quality of life and health for those living in the developments, and effectively integrates residents of affordable housing into their communities. Unless there are investments into the quality of housing into which we're moving the most vulnerable people with chronic primary and mental health issues, we risk replicating the negative outcomes of housing projects of the 50's and 60's.
With historic perspective and decades of research into homeless services best practice, we need to do better this time around. Housing Works knows what it takes to create long-term housing retention by ensuring that housing developments are humane, dignified, trauma-informed and anchored in effective community-building practice and equitable access to the resources needed for individual and community health and wellbeing. Housing is just the first step in solving homelessness.

Housing Works has been self-funding Enriched Services on a shoestring budget with very little investment from housing developers or systems that invest in Permanent Supportive Housing. In fact, we are advocating like mad to ensure that there are adequate services for residents of the new developments.
We are in the process of developing a Policy Manual for the delivery of Enriched Services, as well as a Training Manual for Enriched Services Coordinators, coordinated activity calendars, and data collection protocols. Our goal is to document that the delivery of Enriched Services is an effective strategy to improve housing retention and health outcomes. Evaluation strategies will include resident surveys assessing how Enriched Services contributed to improved mental and primary health outcomes, community engagement, decreased engagement, cultural relevancy of offerings and housing retention. Housing Works also collects participant data in a LAHSA, DHS and Medi-Cal compatible database.