With more than 187,000 people sleeping on California’s streets and in its shelters, the state’s homeless services industry is struggling to hire enough qualified workers to help them.
Last year, Santa Monica College set out to fix that: It heralded the state’s first-ever community college program aimed at training the next generation of homeless service workers. But the program has fallen victim to challenges that long stymied progress on homelessness: unreliable funding and political turmoil.
In fact, it’s not clear if the much-needed program will persist.
“We know the value added when somebody is adequately trained before they’re deployed,” said Vanessa Rios, a senior advisor for workforce development with the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, which funds the community college program. “It would be a disservice to our system should we not fund and support this effort. Where the dollars (will) come from, I don’t know.”
It’s the front-line jobs, where staff interact face-to-face with unhoused clients, that often are the most difficult for agencies to fill or keep filled. That includes doing outreach in encampments, staffing homeless shelters, and working as a case manager trying to find permanent housing for clients.
More than 8,000 people worked in the homeless services sector in Los Angeles County in 2022, a report by consulting firm KPMG and United Way of Greater Los Angeles found. But the county still had more than 1,300 open positions and would need more than 2,200 workers on top of that — so, more than 11,500 altogether — to meet the needs of Los Angeles County’s homeless population.
The state’s Homeless Housing, Assistance and Prevention fund initially supported the program with roughly $750,000. That fund is the main source of flexible money that California cities and counties use to combat homelessness. Once the $750,000 runs out, it’s not clear whether it will be renewed. Gov. Gavin Newsom’s proposed budget, released in January, did not include any new money for Homeless Housing, Assistance and Prevention, although the Legislature could still add some.
While Newsom has poured billions into the cause, it has largely been in one-time grants — not the predictable, ongoing funding that service providers say they need in order to plan long-term programs.
At the same time, the agency that funds the community college program is in crisis. The Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority — a joint agency of the city and county of LA — has all but imploded. Earlier this month, the LA County Board of Supervisors voted to pull its money out of the joint agency, following a scathing audit of its work. Three days later, the head of the agency said she would resign. Now, the city is considering pulling out as well.
When Tamyra Simpson saw a LinkedIn advertisement about the Santa Monica College program, she thought it was “too good to be true.”
Growing up, her grandmother, a substance use counselor, would pick up Simpson at her childhood home in Pasadena and travel to Skid Row in downtown Los Angeles, where they’d serve food to homeless people on Thanksgiving.
“The women in my family, they’ve always been service-oriented,” she said.
Simpson works as a nanny in the wealthy Los Feliz neighborhood near downtown Los Angeles, but said her goal is to eventually work in homeless services.
She was one of about 70 people who applied for admission into the inaugural Santa Monica College homelessness services program, and one of just 27 students who were ultimately selected, said Steven Sedky, who oversees the program. The program culminates in a paid internship at a relevant nonprofit or agency in Los Angeles County.
Only about half of the students are left, Sedky said — an attrition rate “much higher than we initially anticipated.”
Students dropped out for a variety of reasons, he said. One student lost housing, while other students struggled with the commute to class, which includes in-person meetings on Wednesdays.
On Wednesday mornings, Simpson starts her nanny job at 7 am. Then, around 8 am, she begins the hour drive to Santa Monica. If traffic is bad, it can take up to an hour and a half. After class, a little after noon, she drives back to Los Feliz and works another five hours as a nanny.
“I really ask myself, ‘Can I do this?’” she said. “But there’s so much value in this program, this experience. I don’t think I would have changed anything if I could.”
At The People Concern, which will host two Santa Monica College students as interns, about 85 jobs are open — about 10% of their total positions. Once the interns complete the program, Maceri said his organization would be happy to hire them.
“The quality of the work is only as good as the quality of the people doing the work,” he said. “And we need more folks in the homelessness response system workforce.”
Existing degree programs don’t train workers for the realities of what they’ll face in the field, such as navigating the bureaucracy of hospitals and nursing homes, or how to reunite a homeless individual with family, Rios said.
The program also tries to prepare students for burnout, by providing counselors who debrief with students after they go out in the field, and teach them techniques to cope with what they see.
“As an inaugural cohort, there are going to be missteps. We’re essentially the guinea pigs,” she said. “At its core, it’s an incredible opportunity.”
