Wave Staff and Wire Reports
LOS ANGELES — Nearly 60 people who were living in homeless encampments or recreational vehicles in the Lennox, Hawthorne and Inglewood areas have been moved into temporary housing in the first operation organized under Los Angeles County’s Pathway Home program.
Similar to Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass’ Inside Safe program, the county’s Pathway Home is an effort to target homeless encampments, including recreational vehicles, and move people into alternative housing.
According to the county, Pathway Home’s first operation was conducted Aug. 9-11 and targeted a cluster of encampments beside or under the San Diego (405) Freeway in the general area of Los Angeles International Airport. A total of 59 people were moved indoors — 50 into a hotel operated by Pathway Home and nine others into interim housing.
“The homelessness crisis requires an urgent and singular focus on getting every person — regardless of how they are living on the streets — connected to long-term housing and the supportive services they need to stay housed,” County Supervisor Holly Mitchell said. “This is critical for our unincorporated communities that remain heavily impacted by vehicular homelessness.
“By centralizing the county’s homelessness outreach and solutions under one umbrella so key partners across county departments and city jurisdictions are working together with the power of the emergency order, Pathway Home can help us significantly address this crisis,” she added.
“This new strategy needs to build on what we have learned from both Project Roomkey and Inside Safe so that we can more effectively address encampments in neighborhoods across the county outside of the city of Los Angeles,” Supervisor Janice Hahn said. “Many encampments have become tight-knit communities and we are going to have a better chance at convincing people to come inside if we can bring entire encampments inside together.”
It was not immediately clear how long people would remain in the provided housing. County officials said the program provides “wraparound services” aimed at helping them “achieve stability and ultimately move into permanent housing.”
Those services include physical and mental health care, substance-abuse disorder treatment, benefits enrollment and life skills development, according to the county. The program also offers “housing navigation” services to help people obtain leases, along with time-limited subsidies to help them pay rent.
In addition to moving the homeless into housing, Pathway Home workers found housing for 26 pets, while removing seven RVs that were being used for housing and removing tents and debris from the various encampments, officials said.
“Pathway Home is part of an urgent mobilization that reflects an all-hands-on deck approach to scale up and fast-track proven solutions to reduce unsheltered homelessness,” Los Angeles County Homeless Initiative Director Cheri Todoroff said in a statement.
The county’s partners in the first Pathway Home encampment program included the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority; the county Departments of Health Services, Mental Health, Public Works, Sheriff and Animal Care and Control; the nonprofit providers Catholic Charities-St. Margaret’s Center, Mental Health America LA, Harbor Interfaith, St. Joseph Center, and PATH; as well as the California Department of Transportation and California Highway Patrol and the cities of Inglewood and Hawthorne.
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