To start out the new year, L.A. County is trying a new approach to homeless policies with the launch of the Los Angeles County Homeless Services and Housing Department, consolidating 14 departments into one.
KNX News’ Emily Valdez sat down with Sarah Mahin, the new Director of Housing for Health.
“What this department allows us to do is to bring together those different programs, services, staffing, funding that was in different county departments and other entities like LAHSA [Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority] and bring it all together,” Mahin explained.
She said having staff from LAHSA, the Department of Mental Health, and other departments in one hub “makes it easier for people who are homeless to get the housing and services when they want it, and when they need it.”
“The homeless system is more complicated than it needs to be and so this is really an opportunity for us to look at how can we simplify things,” she said.
When asked how accountability will change, Mahin said accountability is “at the forefront of our minds here and at the direction of our board.”
“We look at not just, you know, the dollars going out, but also what are the outcomes,” she said. “So, for example, something that we do in our programs is we look in our case management programs, there's a minimum number of services that we expect to be provided every month. We expect every single client participant in our program to be getting regular assessments because people's needs change, and we expect their case plans to be getting updated accordingly,and we actually track that and we look at that every single month and if those minimum expectations aren't being met, then we issue contractor discrepancy reports and we claw back funding.”
LAHSA’s role will be scaled back as they will be responsible for the homeless count, maintaining the numbers in the database, and reporting to the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
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