A Message from the Commission Chair
and Executive Director
This past year, the Los Angeles Homeless Services
Authority (LAHSA) began the ambitious task of reengi-
neering our operations and how our Continuum of Care
coordinates homeless programs and services for the
many families and individuals experiencing homelessness
within the City and County of Los Angeles. Today, we are
proud to report that by working hand in hand with our
nonprofit, government, business and community partners,
we’ve made substantial progress.
One of the first items on our agenda was to move our
administrative offices in October 2010, from Spring
Street to where we are today at 811 Wilshire Boulevard
in downtown Los Angeles. Equipped with four spacious
conference rooms, a state-of-the-art training room, an
advanced information technology infrastructure, thought-
fully and economically designed workspaces, our new
facility provides improved administrative capacity and
efficiency. It’s also important to note that in spite of an
unstable commercial rental market, we were successful
in negotiating a reduced annual lease expenditure that
included a complete customized build-out.
At the heart of our efforts on the continuum side of
things was the redefining of how we measure success
by focusing more intently on performance, adopting
evidenced-based best practices and emerging program
models, improving data quality, and promoting strategic
partnerships.
We intensified our work around the procurement of new
programs to ensure that investments were directed to
solutions that permanently housed the homeless. And
through the more than 100 nonprofit agencies we fund,
LAHSA placed 6,337 households into permanent housing.
With the launching of the Transition Age Youth pilot proj-
ect in L.A. County Supervisorial Districts 1 and 5, LAHSA
made tremendous strides in advancing our goal to better
understand and meet the needs of youth ages 18 to 21
exiting foster care and at risk of becoming homeless.
In January 2011, we conducted our biennial Greater L.A.
Homeless Count. This arguably being the most complex
point-in-time count in the United States, could not have
been done without the passionate and loyal support of
our 4,000 volunteers.
The overall results showed we had a small decline in our
total county-wide homeless numbers, going from an esti-
mated 52,931 in 2009 to 51,340 in 2011, representing a 3
percent drop. It is our firm belief, along with many thought
leaders on homelessness, that the slightly lower numbers
in 2011 were attributed primarily to the federal Homeless
Prevention and Rapid Re-Housing Program (HPRP). In
partnership with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs,
Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles and Legal Aid
Foundation of Los Angeles, LASHA was able to help more
than 2,115 households retain or regain stable housing
through HPRP.
We continue to make progress in expanding bed coverage
in the Homelessness Management Information System for
all program types: Emergency Shelters, Transitional Hous-
ing and Permanent Supportive Housing. Our data quality
in the system is improving significantly, so much so that
we expect to participate for the very first time in the U.S.
Department of Housing and Urban Development’s 2011
Annual Homeless Assessment Report to Congress.
With the help of our dedicated nonprofit service provid-
ers and partners, much was accomplished towards
bringing homelessness to an end in Los Angeles. In the
coming year, we are committed to working even harder
to build on those accomplishments while making home-
less families and more deliberate targeting of our
investments in performance-based solutions top priorities.
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Ramona Ripston
Chairperson,
Board of Commissioners
Michael Arnold
Executive Director
