Union Rescue Mission, The Way Home

I must admit that I was astounded by the results of the 2009 LAHSA(Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority) Count. I was especially confounded by the reported 70% reduction in homeless families with children! Our experience for the last 2 years, especially the last 13 months at Union Rescue Mission had us accurately reporting the greatest Tsunami of families with children that we have ever faced in our 118 year history, including the Great Depression. Of the more than 224 families who came to our doors in the last 8 months, 53% reported that they were homeless for the first time. We had to scramble to open up an entire wing for 2 parent families and single dads with children, to add to our already entire 4th floor filled with single moms and children. Our staff stepped up, reduced their salaries twice, so that we could welcome all who came during this crisis of families experiencing homelessness, a crisis that was reported throughout Los Angeles and the country. We opened up our community rooms, our day rooms, and even our chapel to accommodate every family. Families and children at Union Rescue Mission are up 99% since 2007 and our meals each day are up 46%. Emergency calls to the LA County wide 211 hot line from families made homeless by unemployment, eviction and foreclosure doubled during this time and Union Rescue Mission became one of the few places of last resort. An emergency forum of all who worked with families experiencing homelessness was called earlier this year to face this crisis. What is most amazing is that LAHSA was a big responder to this crisis. They helped URM/Eimago secure hotel vouchers for the dozens of families representing a 600% increase over the previous year arriving at our LA County wide Winter Shelters sponsored by LAHSA. LAHSA played a key role in providing services, strategy, and resources to address the challenge, and LAHSA deployed Federal Stimulus funds for Rapid Re-housing to area agencies to deal with the crisis of this new face of homelessness, first time, low barrier families. As you can see from the rising, (no skyrocketing) graph above of the 40% increase in LA County wide families on Cal Works alone becoming homeless, there is hard evidence that what Union Rescue Mission and other agencies assisting homeless families was well documented by the Los Angeles Department of Social Services. This concrete evidence shows at least 8100 families, possibly 20,000 to 24,000 individuals, are family members experiencing homelessness, yet the LAHSA count only documents less than 5,000 individuals as part of families experiencing homelessness? As homelessness lags behind unemployment, the number of homeless families is estimated to reach 10,000, and we need to prepare for that, but instead we get a report that says that homelessness among families with children has dropped by 70%? As a friend of mine suggested, this is like getting in your car, punching in data in the Navigation system to travel to somewhere near Mid Wilshire, West, and instead your system tells you to go South toward Long Beach. Almost all of us would know that something was wrong with the data before we left our driveway. Yet, LAHSA not only left the driveway, but published the results, and patted themselves on the back for helping to make these results happen, and then had some local economists mention that “though it seemed counter-intuitive, the results are accurate!” I must say that these results are not only counter-intuitive, but absolutely wrong. Any fractional decrease in numbers of individuals experiencing homelessness were outpaced by the rise in families becoming homeless since 2007. I must end by applauding LAHSA’s leadership in providing services, strategy, coordinating services, and deploying resources to step up to meet the Tsunami of need that we have faced over the last 18 months to 24 months, however, I’d like to suggest that they continue in this role and possibly look elsewhere for an entity who can carry out an objective and accurate account.

Is it common for LAHSA(Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority) to be off on their count?? I read their findings in the LA times a week or two ago and was surprised as well, especially in the face of our current economy. Is CalWORKS typically more accurate on the numbers??

Great questions, Mike. Thank you. I am not sure whether it is common for LAHSA’s count to be off, but I would describe it as an estimate provided by a combination of counts and estimates combined with a formula. CalWorks numbers are concrete cases, actual families with names, numbers, but unfortunately no address or home. Therefore, I have much greater confidence in the CalWorks numbers and the experiences of all of the agencies listed above. Bless you, Mike!