How Best to Address Street Encampments in Los Angeles

The subject of street encampments in Los Angeles has led to much discussion about how best to move people indoors and best support them in their path to permanent housing. To ensure an effective, collaborative response, the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA) has developed Best Practices for Addressing Street Encampments. The guidance lifts up evidence-based and proven practices for service providers and community partners on the most effective ways to conduct location-specific outreach to bring those living in encampments inside to shelter and housing.

The Best Practices report offers guidance for balancing the need for location-specific outreach with the importance of a regional, trauma-informed approach to unsheltered homelessness that places people on the path to a stable, permanent home, as informed by our outreach teams and service providers.

The Best Practices are grounded in five key principles, all of which must be addressed to effectively move people from an encampment into shelter or housing in a lasting, sustainable way:

· Provide ample time to engage with people living in the encampment during this important transition

· Ensure voluntary, client-centered, and trauma-informed care

· Provide adequate, appropriate, and low-barrier resources

· Identify an experienced service partner with deep ties to the community and let them lead

· Establish strong team coordination

“Our system’s 240 outreach teams play a key role in how our system has ended homelessness for more than 65,000 people over the last three years,” said LAHSA Executive Director Heidi Marston. “Outreach teams develop relationships by building trust and confidence with our unsheltered neighbors to place them on a path to housing. Critical to the success of this work is a trauma-informed approach that places the individual’s goals and needs at the forefront. Homelessness is not monolithic and the solutions, while complex, must be grounded in compassion and equity.”

Focusing resources and support on encampments without following the best practices can result in several unintended consequences that push the unsheltered further away from permanent housing including:

· The same people may return to the site of the encampment or disperse into the nearby community within a few days or weeks of receiving shelter

· Taking away critical resources from other vulnerable unhoused people in the region to focus on one encampment does not prioritize regional resources for the most in-need

· Under-planned encampment operations can retraumatize people who have already undergone considerable physical and mental suffering

LAHSA drew upon several sources to create the Best Practices for Addressing Street Encampments. It started with case studies from El Sereno, Venice and Globe, the Sepulveda Recreation Center, and the Encampment-to-Home program. LAHSA also added insights from the Paxton-Bradly encampment relocation, an Arnold Ventures report on addressing unsheltered homelessness, and the United Way’s Home for Good Street Strategy.

“We have a choice — we can learn and help, or we can repeat and fail. We can put alignment and resources behind the tools and abilities we have to meet the needs of our unhoused neighbors and get people on a path to permanent housing, or we can refuse to learn from the mistakes of the past and use enforcement to scatter and retraumatize people,” said Eric Ares, Manager, Homeless Systems Change at the United Way of Greater Los Angeles.

While the Best Practices report offers the most effective tactics to address unsheltered homelessness, outreach is only as effective as the resources that the teams can provide the unsheltered. The Los Angeles region is investing in more housing solutions, but it needs over 500,000 more affordable homes to prevent economically disadvantaged Angelenos from falling into homelessness and provide homes for the unhoused.

“Until we have more housing, we need to prioritize strategies addressing unsheltered homelessness that are humane, invest our limited resources wisely, and that address the root causes of the homelessness crisis,” Marston said. “This guidance is foundational to the life-saving work of outreach and promotes optimal outcomes for our unhoused neighbors.”