Just a week ago, the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development announced it would no longer fund the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA). The department was a critical revenue stream for the agency, which in turn funded many nonprofits and organizations in LA that help families who are or are at risk of being homeless.
One of those nonprofits is Home Again LA, which has been around for 16 years and has a variety of services. One of the main ones they provide is emergency shelter for families experiencing homelessness, where they are placed in a motel for 90 days with the goal of eventually placing them into permanent housing.
They also provide up to six months of rental assistance, where families put 30% of their monthly income towards the rent of their apartment while Home Again LA pays the balance, eviction prevention support and weekly, sometimes daily, check-ins with families.
Within the past year, the nonprofit merged with another organization called the Burbank Temporary Aid Center, so now they do grocery distributions once a month, where families can get up to six bags of food items, and provide daily lunches to people in the unhoused community.
Albert Hernandez, CEO of Home Again LA, said that the nonprofit doesn’t just help families financially. While they do provide monetary support, they also help families find jobs so they can be financially stable and not be at risk of eviction.
Home Again LA has been receiving funding from LAHSA for about three years, approximately $400,000 annually. But now that the agency has had its own funding suspended, there’s a lot of uncertainty that nonprofits that use LAHSA funds will now have to face.
“If we place families into apartments and they’re relying on funds from LAHSA, yet LAHSA is no longer going to be able to provide funding to Home Again LA or other entities, what are we doing for our clients?” Hernandez questioned. “How are we putting clients first and making sure that they don’t fall back into homelessness just because of this halt on federal funds?
“Now we’re going backwards,” he continued. “Instead of providing support … to families that are homeless, we’re putting them in jeopardy again. And so what entity, if any, is going to come in and replace LAHSA, and how soon will that happen so that we make sure that these families are not put in that same situation that they were prior to us securing housing for them?”
It’s not pure doom and gloom for Home Again LA, though. The nonprofit has received funding from many different sources over the years, including the City of San Fernando, Burbank, Glendale and elected officials like LA County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath and Kathryn Barger.
Although Hernandez has hoped to build a stronger relationship with LAHSA over the years, he did not consider them to be a major funder of the nonprofit. They have a $4 million annual operating budget and still have federal funds leftover from 2016.
Nonetheless, the lack of funds from LAHSA could be a blow to the number of people that Home Again LA can serve. Currently, they help around 300 families; Hernandez estimates that number might be reduced by 30 to 40 families.
“We will hustle and do whatever we can to find funding in other places, so that we don’t take that hard hit,” Hernandez said. “That’s what Home Again LA is really good at – is trying to find funding outside of the area that we can bring into our community and continue serving more and more families on an annual basis, and ultimately making more of an impact.”
Home Again LA has experienced similar circumstances with a lack of LAHSA funding before. Speaking candidly, Hernandez said that there have been times when the agency did not reimburse them for funds spent. The most recent stretch was from last August to around April.
“That’s scary for us as the boots on the ground nonprofits that are doing a lot of the heavy lifting and the work,” Hernandez said. “My job and the job of our staff is to help people get back on their feet, but when you put an organization like Home Again LA and other organizations out here in the homeless sector in that situation, where you’re leaning on us now to front all these funds and you’re not reimbursing us for eight to nine months, that’s scary for a nonprofit.”
The nonprofit will continue to look for new partnerships, including with the county’s Department of Homeless Services and Housing which launched Jan. 1. Hernandez also hopes that local nonprofits that help the unhoused community are able to collaborate and possibly even merge together so that they can use their collective resources to make a stronger impact.
“Imagine if we work together and closer and share ideas and programs. I think we … can survive longer, but if we continue to fight over the same pot of funds that are available, then we’re not really going to make a stronger impact than we’re all envisioning.”
For more information about Home Again LA, visit https://www.homeagainla.org/.