Formed in 2013, our newest regional funders network in San Diego is comprised of private foundations and United Ways committed to preventing and ending homelessness.  Specifically, the Homelessness Working Group transitioned from San Diego Grantmakers to become part of the growing group of public and private partners supporting the United Way of San Diego County's activities to end homelessness in the region.  The partnerships will allow United Way to capitalize on the work already done by the Homelessness Working Group since its formation in 2003, while also increasing United Way's efforts to affect system-level change.

Purpose:  To promote an effective and efficient system of housing and services to help end homelessness in San Diego County.

Goal:  To build a San Diego County network of funders who are committed to solving homelessness through leadership, education, and advocacy; strategic collaboration, alignment and focus of resources; and effective promotion and replication of evidence based practices in our community. 

Objective:  Expand philanthropic engagement in the systems change work needed to end homelessness in San Diego County.

This blog post explains in greater detail how member organizations will work together moving forward.

Primary Contact

Amy Denhart

Participating Organizations

• Alliance Healthcare Foundation
• Brailean Family Trust Equity Partners 
• McCarthy Family Foundation
• Michael McConnell
• The Parker Foundation
• San Diego Housing Commission
• United Way of San Diego County

Most states determine TANF payment rates solely through family composition.  However, seven U.S. states use both location and family composition to determine TANF payment rates.  These states include California, Connecticut, Illinois, Kansas, New York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia.  The following outlines the location variances in California for a family of three:

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Counties in California bear large hidden costs for individuals with disabilities who are indigent or homeless. A large share of this cost is health related – costs that would be paid through Medi-Cal if the individuals were receiving Supplemental Social Security Income (SSI).

In the typical monthly General Relief/General Assistance statewide caseload, an estimated 51,000 individuals have disabilities, but are not receiving SSI. Eligibility rates for SSI increase markedly with age, rising from less than 20% among recipients 18-25 years of age to half among recipients 46-55 years of age. California counties could save $42 million per month and private hospitals could save another $13 million if eligible General Relief recipients with disabilities in the typical monthly caseload were moved onto SSI.

County health costs for indigent residents will be ameliorated when the Medicaid Expansion provisions of the new Federal Health Law take effect in 2014 (and to a lesser extent by the 1115 Medicaid waiver), but the extent and amount of federal offsets are not known at this time. Counties are likely to face some level of continuing costs for these residents, and there are likely to be continuing financial benefits for counties’ healthcare and GR budgets when low-income individuals with disabilities are enrolled in SSI.

This study from the Economic Roundtable examines opportunities for counties to avoid costs by moving individuals with disabilities who are General Relief recipients, medically indigent hospital patients, and homeless hospital patients onto SSI and Medi-Cal.

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The Funders Together to End Homelessness – Los Angeles chapter is a community in which more than thirty funder members meet quarterly to learn about and discuss new solutions to homelessness in LA County. The goal of the chapter is to build a regional network of private and philanthropic funders working to prevent and end homelessness who:

• Invest in effective, strategic, and innovative grantmaking
• Mobilize leadership, ideas, and partnerships to communicate what works and why
• Promote more efficient use of local, state, and national resources

While the 2017 Point-in-Time Count revealed that Los Angeles County has one of the largest homeless populations in the country, there is an enormous amount of collaboration, innovation, and opportunity to end homelessness as evident in some of the developments noted below:

• Funders Collaborative: Through the Home For Good Funders Collaborative, action-oriented and community-focused corporations, foundations and public agencies collaborate in shaping the strategic vision of L.A.’s work to end homelessness and increasing impact by leveraging their grantmaking. It has effectively supported services and solutions needed to reduce and end homelessness by:
  • Building the unprecedented level of public and political will in Los Angeles to address homelessness
  • Serving as a catalyst toward the planning and adoption of coordinated, comprehensive County and City plans to combat homelessness
  • Seeding systems change, including the Coordinated Entry System (CES), which streamlines housing placements across the County
    
• Coordinated Entry: CES has become the “new normal” and the former maze-like housing process is being streamlined through collaborative systems change. CES now operates on-the-ground in all areas of LA County through the support and coordination of over 100 local service providers. A team in each region now meets regularly, working together to ensure full geographic coverage by coordinating and expanding outreach, effective assistance to help clients navigate the housing system, and efficient and accurate matches to housing and non-housing resources (such as medical supports) based on the individual needs and acuity level.
• Allocation of Healthcare Funding for Housing Subsidies: The L.A. County Department of Health Services established a Flexible Housing Subsidy Pool to streamline and scale up the housing process for homeless individuals who are struggling with complex medical and behavioral health conditions.  Through non-profit owned supportive housing, affordable housing, master lease buildings, scattered site housing, and private market housing, rental subsidies are provided to the highest utilizers of DHS services who are not able to access existing subsidies. In December of 2017, the RAND Corporation released . RAND’s key findings indicated:
  • Medical and mental health service use fell sharply, particularly a 68 percent reduction in emergency room visits and 77 percent reduction in inpatient stays.
  • Across all the public services examined, the cost of services for participants declined by nearly 60 percent during their first year in the program, falling from an average of $38,146 per person to $15,358 after one year of housing

  Including the costs of PSH, the program produced a net savings of about 20 percent – for every $1 invested in the program, Los Angeles County saved $1.20 by reducing health care and other social service costs.

• Accelerating the Production of Supportive Housing: Foundations are supporting nonprofit developers to increase their pipelines, investing loan funds for acquisition and predevelopment financing, and working with local government to reduce the time it takes for permitting construction of supportive housing.

  In 2017, the FTEH-LA Network hosted several learning sessions including:

  • What’s Next for LA City & County Strategies to End Homelessness?
  • Equity and Homelessness
  • Pay for Success and Impact Investing Workshop

   

Steering Committee Members - 2018-2019

• Andrea Iloulian, Conrad N. Hilton Foundation
• Chris Hubbard, California Community Foundation
• David Howden, CSH
• Emily Bradley, United Way of Greater Los Angeles
• Rosa Benitez, Weingart Foundation

Participating Organizations

The Ahmanson Foundation
Aileen Getty Foundation
Annenberg Foundation
Bank of America
California Community Foundation
The California Endowment
The California Wellness Foundation
Carl and Roberta Deutsch Foundation
Carrie Estelle Doheny Foundation
Cedars Sinai
Conrad N. Hilton Foundation
CSH
Dignity Health (formerly known as Catholic Healthcare West)
Dwight Stuart Youth Foundation
Everychild Foundation
First 5 LA
George Hoag Family Foundation
HealthNet
Jewish Community Foundation
John Gogian Family Foundation
JP Morgan Chase & Co.
Kaiser Permanente
L.A. Care Health Plan
La Jolla Coin
Liberty Hill Foundation
Pfaffinger Foundation
The Ralph M. Parson Foundation
REDF
Rose Hills Foundation
Roy and Patricia Disney Family Foundation
Southern California Grantmakers
Specialty Family Foundation
Mark Taper Foundation
UniHealth Foundation
Union Bank of California Foundation
United Way of Greater Los Angeles
Vladimir and Araxia Buckhantz Foundation
Weingart Foundation
Well Being Trust
W.M. Keck Foundation

The Conrad N. Hilton Foundation hosted over 80 local stakeholders for the third annual Chronic Homelessness Initiative Convening at the California Science Center in downtown Los Angeles.