Consideration of legislative issues as well as developing an understanding and perspective on the house of representatives and its role in our government. This coverage may not be used for any partisan Political Campaign purpose or be made available for such purposes. Finally, i want to welcome todays audience to this hearing which we will be conducting under the rules of the houseof representatives. And the committee on Financial Services. This hearing is entitled examining the homelessness crisis in los angeles. I now recognize myself for five minutes to give an opening statement. Again, good morning to everyone. Welcome to the committee on Financial Services. Field hearing. Again centitled examining the homelessness crisis in los angeles. This is our first full committee build hearing about 116 thomas. I would like to thank the California Africanamerican Museum and of course the executive director that you just met, George O Davis for hosting todays hearing. This mister chairwoman of the House Financial Services committee , i have made it a top priority to focus on homelessness. Were in a National Homelessness basis area earlier this year, i convened the first ever full Committee Hearing on homelessness and today, we will continue our discussion by examining the homelessness crisis in los angeles and the federal, state and local responses to address this great challenge that is in our city and that is facing our nation. According to the latest points in time count, both the city and county of los angeles experienced 12 to 16 percent increase from last year and the number of people that are homeless. Experiencing homelessness on any given night, we have nearly 60,000 people in the county while over 35,000 people experience homelessness right here in the city. Ssim describing some of our most vulnerable neighbors including families with children, seniors and unaccompaniedyouth. We cannot ignore our homelessness crisis is directly linked to the Affordable Housing crisis. Too many people cannotafford to keep a roof over their heads. Its wages have not kept pace with rising rents. Los angeles has one of the week affordable marking Housing Markets in the us. In la, a renter earning the minimum wage of 13. 25 an hour would need to work 79 ahours a week in order to afford a twobedroom apartment as a result, approximately 721 thousand households in the county are severely rent burden. Meaning that they pay more and 50 percent of their income on rent. We need a bold and comprehensive response at the federal, state and locallevel to address the homelessness crisis. Thats why i have introduced this bill, the ending homelessness and. Legislation that would provide over 13 billion in funding to ensure every person experiencing homelessness in america has a place to call home. The Financial Services committee passed this legislation earlier this year ssbut i am committed to doing everything i can to get this bill passed into law. Both the county and city are working hard to combat the homelessness andAffordable Housing crisis. Thanks to voters approving local ballot measures, in 2016 and 2017, the city and county have robust new resources to fund initiatives to improve the lives of people, experiencing homelessness. Me proposition hhh has helped fund the development of thousands of new permanent Supportive Housing units and so far, ending or measured page has helped working down people find housing however, much more needs to be done. Including passing legislation like the ending homelessness at the law at the federal level. Today, we will receive testimony from representatives of the county and city including mayor garcetti who will testify on our third panel. We will also hear from housing and Service Providers who are on the ground every day delivering Critical Services to people experiencing homelessness. So i would like to thank our Committee Members who are in attendance here today. And im so very pleased to have with us representative al green all the way from texas, houston texas. Pprepresentative Sylvia Garcia is your also from houston texas, please welcome her. And of course, i would like to thank the members of the california delegation who are not on the committee here today, representative american. Represented jimmy gomez. Representative judy chu. [applause] and were looking forward to being joined by representative brad sherman give them a round of applause anyway. And so i look forward to hearing the witnesses testimony. Today, we have three panels and i want to welcome the first panel for todays hearing. Our first panel of distinguished witnesses are Christina Miller, the deputy mayor for the city of los angeles homeless initiative. That is the office of the mayor of the city of Los Angeles Area peter lynn, executive director, los angeles homelessservice authority. Margarita lawrence, chief program officer, Housing Authority ofthe city of los angeles. Monique king whalen, executive director Los Angeles County authority. And kevin murray, former state senator and president and ceo of the wine garden center. Phil anselm, director of Los Angeles County was without ves and objection, going to take their written statements to be marked, and be part of the record. Each of you will have five minutes to summarize your testimony. I will give you a signal by having the gavel, likely when one when it remains the time i would ask you to wrap up your testimony so we can be respectful of both witnesses and the committee. And so before recognizing first miss miller, let me just say that there are other elected officials have joined us today and i would like all of the other elected officials who are in the audience to believe and. [applause] miss miller, you are recognized five minutes to present oral testimony. Very much. Chairwoman waters and his team members, Christina Miller and i serve as deputy mayor under the leadership of eric garcetti. I want to begin by commending your leadership byintroducing the ending homelessness. While the crisis is not as acute in most cities and in los angeles, this is undoubtedly a persuasive issue nationally. It is one that cities but also rural areas and has left many families and individuals without the basic need of a safe place to live in prior is unacceptable. The only way we find our way out of this crisis is together. With decades of disinvestment on the state and federal government amounting to 500 million per year on average, we need your help to make lasting progress. We find ourselves in a bit of a paradox. We are seen as National Leaders with the best week of interventions to combat homelessness, our numbers increase after my 12 percent countywide and the scale of our crisis is daunting area is fair to say was average angelenos, its hard to feel that progress is being made. Its fair to say we get every living person on the street fast enough so the question becomes how did the city and county with so many resources with strong committed leader and a Strategic Plan one of the largest populations of any city in america read answer is twofold. First while we have made progress in just a few short years to outreach, provide services and place homeless neighbors and housing, it began in earnest in a few short years ago and the homelessness crisis in a in n making for decades. Secondly, it was in focus for all of us this year as a Homeless Count numbers increase but record housing placement number, almost 22,000 people countywide. Homelessness is a symptom of a much larger macro issue in our region and across america. Our homelessness crisis is our Affordable Housing crisis. Homelessness has among other things become the most extreme expression of poverty as well divide more acute so investing in a homeless system alone wont solve this process. Concurrently we must address the feeding system in the homelessness and increase Affordable Housing options or people who exit. The shift telling you about the citys response. This year city of los angeles homeless budget accounts to 462 million, five times homelessness budget in 2015. With two thirds of spending going toward permanent housing asyou mentioned, our aaa housing bonds , 10,000 people over the course of 10 years. An action Oriented Partnership with the county, philanthropy, the city is focused on a response can be broken down into three areas. Protecting homelessness, reducing homelessness increasing and preserving Affordable Housing. Additionally for the First Time Ever the city has a placebased strategy in a row, center of the recent crisis. Ill touch on Homelessness Prevention first, a key part of our regional strategy. The citys largest Antipoverty Program is a family source enter where a multitude of services are located at 16 century city wine and a range of services and Legal Support and financial counseling are delivered. We have the rent stabilization ordinance puts a limit on rent increases and requires cause evictions. The best way to prevent homelessnessspeople in their current homes. The city is scaling up and eviction defense programs that provide education, landlord mediation and legal representation if needed e. Secondly ill touch on our street strategy and are housing efforts. The three out of four People Living in shelters los angeles, more than any other city in america worked to address Health Issues that have to be balanced with our fieldbased outreach and Services Response to navigating people to houses and shelters. We coordinate these efforts through a unified homelessness response center, a space where city leadership and departments are colocated and make realtime decisions on how to respond to the operational picture on the ground. While we work to mitigate issues of cleanliness and health, the ultimate goal is to get people off the streets for good. Here we leverage an outreach effort that expanded to 200 countywide get household into permanent housing. Simply put, people live on the streets because they dont have enough indoor places for them to be. To adjust that through the Mayors Initiative the city is sending up to 23 Housing Project that will wield 2000 beds. Five projects open so far yielding 247 beds. This is the biggest shelter mecapital program in the nation. The charge on our housing efforts, to meet the needs of our most vulnerable homeless, 1. 2 billion loan program has led to the city more than tripling its support of housing pipeline with 110 projects stand over 7400 units on their way to People Living on the streets and in other circumstances, putting us on track to meet the goal to build 10,000 units by 2026. Weve also created disease for Inclusionary Zoning program, the Affordable Housing linkage fee manage the inclusion of Affordable Housing for payment of the theater capitalize Affordable Housing program. Weve also enhanced our landuse incentives through the after words Oriented Communities Program and j jj. Which will work in canada with the linkage fee resulting in more mixed income development. We are strongly advocating for rights in sacramento and supporting tenant Protection Laws like pb 1482 on the state level. An entireaccounting and rent log. An antidiscrimination law for rental assistance. We are firmly committed to innovation and finally the city has a placebased strategy for the First Time Ever in skidrow. Emergency state dollars in the amount of 20 million support to address the unique shortterm and longterm needs. I do somuch, that is just a snapshot of what the city is doing. Like you very much, mister green, you are now assigned to five minutes your testimony. Members of the committee, members of the la delegation, and i greatly appreciate the opportunity to testify this morning and i will act to say that its much nicer to address as an armchair and im writing number i like to cover a few of the recent data on homelessness and some ma of the trends that brought us here and some of the acts out of homelessness. Last year as you indicated a 12 percent increase in homelessness inla county meaning nearly the 5000 angelenos are listedgiven night. 75 percent of them as deputy mayor indicated our own shelter. This is reflecting the statewide prices in homelessness. Of my colleagues in other continuums, the other 43 across the state, three quarters of them showed an increase in homelessness this year and that increase was greater than the we saw in los angeles due to the interventions that you mentioned that the voters in Service House people out of homelessness in a count only tells us a snapshot, the moment in time , our data indicate in addition to59,000 people , 55,000 more people felt the homelessness over the course of 2015 so over 107,000 people experience was this over the course of the year, they locate the homelessness of about 150 people a day. The interventions that we were able to deploy and as the deputy mayor indicated, they are among the mostrobust in the country. We were in the house hundred 33 people out of homelessness on a daily basis. Led to the increase is primarily written by Housing Affordability route costs this is a crisis of Housing Affordability. Los angeles is the most populous county in america, we did attend largest were we to say and we have a lease Affordable Housing market in the United States. By multiple measures. More than a third of a ventures pay more than 50 percent of their income for rent. It is the next ordinary number of extremely low income people anyone their fingertips. There one medical issue, one part repair fromhomelessness. On a dailybasis. Mon if we neglect to address the root cause of Housing Affordability and the California Housing Partnership indicates that we have a gap of 517,000 units of affordability in the county of los angeles, we will not get ahead of this w crisis no matter how effective our intervention. I also want indicate very clearly that we cannot address homelessness without simultaneously addressing structural and institutional racism in america. It is a core driver for the homeless crisis that we have and there are radical disproportionality in raising the distribution of people experiencing homelessness in los angeles and in the United States. 35 percent of the people who experience homelessness are black. That is against a healthy population of eight percent africanamerican. The drivers for that are multirepresents a multitude of things. I like to call out in particular the history of racial segregation in federal policy that drove to meet housing segregation in this county, or redlining and cross nation, federal policy institute redlining, instituted housing segregation and how Health Policy enforcement for decades in the 20th century as american households were building well household ownership. Was exclusively reserved for white household africanamericans were blocked out of Home Ownership for those programs and the building of the 20th century occurred left africanamerican households with one can of the wealth of whitehall cells in this country. That is a majordriver for homelessness. There is no fallback or many africanamerican households. In addition, our criminal justice over polices over incarcerates africanamericans. Africanamerican communities Racial Disparity in incarceration has led to the year overrepresentation in our criminal justice, in the county of los angeles of eight Percent People of color, it percentblack people in the county of los angeles, 30 percent target population are black. Ghostwriters need people with severe economic disparities and capacity within our market, Housing Market, job market and every other aspect of our culture was after the address were going to get to the cost of addressing homelessness. There are a number of resources that the federal government has constrained. Cdbg and home funding being particularly notable as reductions reductions over the last few years on the mental formulas distributed core federal Housing Program affordability address affordability were not fair. California was shortchanged. We in Los Angeles County have 11,000 units of Public Housing compared to new york city with hundred 70,000 units of Public Housing. So not only is our rentour incomes low, we do not have the affordability mechanisms like section 8 and Public Housing that new york asked. I want to thank you chairwoman for the opportunity to address this panel. Miss ank you very much, margarita lares, you recognize to present your testimony. Thank you members of the committee on Financial Services. Thank you members of the committee for inviting the Housing Authority of the city of los angeles provide a written testimony to speak today regarding this humanitarian crisis in los angeles. Before introducing hr 1856, the homelessness of 2019. A special recognitionto congresswoman and chair of the Committee Maxine Waters for being a strong vocal and persistent champion or our community. Support 1856 communities with a high need los angeles we will see the appropriate resources. This is both the most effective and efficient use of federal funding. Have a further report priority for federal assistance should begin to community in which local governments like los angeles have adopted policies to aid in ending and preventing homelessness. Los angeles committee, community has into place by taking a collective approach and building and preserving portable Housing Committee ongoing medical assistance and increased use of services. This commitment was further solidified when the voters of los angeles composition triple h in the city and the county. While we believe local governments and organizations must play a part in solution, we need the federal government to be a partner in this effort. For 10 years, we have taken on the battle and homelessness and preserve Affordable Housing by using adderall subsidies such as the section 8 housing choice voucher. They have implement the veterans, homeless veterans, homeless emily, and committed vouchers for permanent Supportive Housing which has led to 19,500 rental subsidies being utilized the house formerly homeless households. Hospice assistance, the Homeless Individuals would be too big, would be greater. Continuing in december in 2017, following the path of triple hh, they committed an additional 5000 projectbased vouchers for Supportive Housing. Within two years, after that will be utilized in 40 percent of the resources to house people experiencing homelessness. The size of 36,165 people experiencing homelessness in the city eighth on the 2019 science counts, there are 18,000 households on the voucher waitlist. In october 2017 when they had to open a waitlist for vouchers, 180,000 households registered for assistance. Payments have increased by 20 over the last four years. Because of the contained increases in the rent or mortgage while the voucher holders havein dropped the avere annual income for batch of Program Participants is 15,953 or 1412 a month. Yet in 2019 Fair Market Rent for one bedroom apartment in los angeles is 1384 per month. This reality is the rental costs are high and incomes are low. When availability success rates in finding a place to live has dropped to 53 for households with the voucher. This is especially heartbreaking for individuals who have waited years on the wait list for a voucher only to return the voucher or have it expire. The ability to utilize 100 of voucher has a negative impact on the agency. The Housing Authority finds its programhe operations with federally provided fees for each voucher with the drop in voucher from 100 to 96 in administrative dollars. Is further compounded when only 70 properly administer the program receivedd a proration factor. While the focus of h. R. 1856 is preventing homelessness its also important to support Affordable Housing. Homeless prevention is the homeless problem will continue to grow if the number of people become homeless growsw faster. As you are aware of permanent housing is the most appropriate for people experiencing homelessness and to prevent recidivism rate permanent Supportive Housing offers a rep support from the section 8 voucher in assistance and additional allocation of vouchers from the federal government will make it feasible. Thank you. Thank you very much. Ms. King viehland go ahead. Thank you for the opportunity to testify on the homelessness crisis. I dare say the most critical humanitarian crisis facing the county of los angeles. It is resolute in our mission to build better lives in better neighborhoods as well as their commitment to and generational poverty and homelessness. Using a combination of local state and federal resources we administer several programs that provide housing opportunities for lowerincome families, the elderly, the disabled youth transitioning out of foster care in individuals and families and homelessness. Moreover the second largest Public Housing in southernn california we administer several federally funded programs that help in our efforts to combat homelessness including section 8 providing rental assistance for approximately 25,000 families. In lightence of the homelessness crisis we recognize the need to take a bold step and use all of the resources at our disposal to meet the crisis have on. Therefore we have created a homeless process that dedicates 100 of our section 8 turnover vouchers to help homeless angelenos. We create operating in the counties to align her policies to streamline access in the leverage local resources develop creative Flexible Solutions that restricted federalwe dollars to not allow third recent portrait of the Homelessness Program or hit to remove barriers to access for voucher holders that were next to impossible to use their fracturedur a secure unit. Allows us to engage Property Owners to ensure a monetary incentive for qualified vouchers are referred to the honor. We also assist clients with security deposits come utility fees and moving expenses. Further his client received access to county funded intensive Management Services to to help in transition and ongoing support of services if necessary. The lapd at the start approximate 2 million in the first three years and these resources helped over 1900 individuals and families come home. Additionally expanding this program so it supports eight other in the counties have replicated and leading to an additional 825 individuals housed over the same perry rear provide capitol funding and rental assistance for new Affordable Housing. Over the past five years account is provided 294 million in capitol subsidies for the development of Affordable Housing leveraging 2. 3 billion in public and private funds that created or than 4200 Affordable Care unit, twothirds of which will serve special needs populations. This year alone we will fund five times thed number of units funded just five years ago. However recognize that we cannot tell their way out of this crisis several actions have been taken by the county. For example the board of supervisors passed a temporary rent stabilization ordinance in effect until december 2019. The board passed an ordinance in april of this year barring qualifying perspective tenants solely based on their source of incomee like a rental subsidy. Despite these Creative Solutions and while an unprecedented number of affordable andnu supportive units are in construction and being funded the inflow through myriad of institutional and social disparities lack of Economic Growth and mobility continues to conflate their effort to be looked to our elected officials for were actions to help address the crisis. We request support and sustaining her increasing funding for vital federal programs are providing administrative flexibility allowing for regional waivers and redistributing of unused Housing Authority voucher funding. In closing the activities outlined in this testimony as well as he detailed written test mayor indicative of a collaborative approach in a fight and it is a fight and homelessness. This is solutions are varied and complex but one thing is clear we cannot do it without significant investment from all levels of government and the funding proposed in the act of 2019 introduced by chairwoman waters is an excellent example of the type of federal investment needed to combat this crisis but again the lapd standr resolute in our mission to build better lives and better neighborhoods. Thank you for the invitation to address this urgent man there. Thank you veryen much ms. Kig viehland presenter murray you are now recognized for five minutes to give her testimony. Thank you madam chairman and the committee for holding this hearing what i believe is one of the most crucial areas we face today. It may be the civil rights issue of our time for reasons stated previously on this panel. One of our main sources of providing a safety net to its citizens is to solve this problem. One of the things about homelessness policy is that its essentially the worst that test of policy. If you are in Affordable Housing advocate thats the driving force. If youre a Mental Health advocate that is the driving force. Youre a criminal Justice Reform person that is the driving source of our problem. The fact is, it is all of those things in one of the things i oswant to urge the committee too is to resist the temptation to find and fund a single silver bullet. Their current Housing First model i think goes in that direction. The rise ofti Housing First has also taken away funding for transitional housing for the Weingarten Center now houses about 600 people a night right on the corner of six in san pedro on skid row. We have had to transition from a transitional housing operation to a shelter in Bridge Housing operation. What that is taken away is it is taken away the funding for lifei skills and other skills that even if you put a homeless individual into permanent housing you have not necessarily given them the life skills to become a goodou neighbor. So again i would argue to the committee and respectfully request the committee to look at this solution that we find as Many Solutions as there are four types of people who have gone into homelessness and where they come from and that one size does not fit all. Some of the things we also dont fund our family reunification and shared housing and roommate and now some of you who have been in foster care advocates know now we actually fund family foster care. We do not fund for someone to rent a room at a family members house. Our model is strict we build the unit roughly at 200 square foot unit with a bathroom and the kitchen to try to put a person in that unit did sometimes those people do want to leave their communities in the location where they d are. Sometimes they dont like the rules that come from those. Most of the clients do not want to goel into shelters. One of the things that we have to do is find a multitude of funds that fund all of those. They do exist but are our model kind of stiefel said innovation. Again for instance the county has a flexible housing pool. There are flexible programs but the overwhelming majority in the process that happened in thisy area are 250 square foot apartment and there are people who need different types of support and i think again i want to emphasize this should be a multimodal approach. The other thing as someone who operates on skid row on the ground we do needd, to aggressively enforce laws against those who prey on the homeless. Right now on skid row [applause] right now on skid row there are criminal gangs who were literally charging people for a place on the sidewalk. One of things we have to do and i understand that our criminal justice are not necessarily aggressive on skid row but we have to find a way make this differentiation because we are leaving people out on the street to be preyedd upon. The next thing we need to do you need to find humane but more aggressive ways to deal with the fact is there are people that have the services for a variety of reasons. Its not all Mental Health. Its not all Substance Abuse. Sometimes frankly its a very rational decision that they make on their part but we need to be aggressive about that and finally i would like to say that los angeles taxpayer should be rewarded for taxing themselves to helps solve the homeless crisis. [applause] one moment mr. Murray. We appreciate the enthusiasm but would you please refrain from interrupting the presenters . Thank you. Go right ahead and theu. Windup mr. Murray to. The text for his opponent to invest early and, literally billions of dollars in the federal government should recognize and leverage that money to help us beat this problem andra finally the proposition triple agent proposition h expects 10,000 units of permanent Supportive Housing which are one of the solutions but the fact is before we getd the 10,000 we will run out of section 8 vouchers as revenue. Thank you mr. Murray. Thank you very much. Mr. Ansell you are now recognized for five minutes. Thank you very much madam chairman members. My name is phil ansell im the director of the los angeles homeless initiative. Im here to testify before you today regarding the countywide Movement Combat homelessness which was catalyzedco by the bod of supervisors in 2015 when they accepted a medal of countywide leadership to combat this crisis the county homeless omission to we got the 400 invited governments and Community Experts in policy summits to generate on a consensus basis the countywide conference of plan to prevent a combat homelessness. Therefore you have 2016, 47 comprehensive strategies were unanimously approved by the board of supervisors and on that same day the Los Angeles City counsel adopted the firstever Los Angeles City comprehensive homeless strategy, testament to the deep collaboration between the city and the county of los angeles and combating homelessness. At thehe time they approved 100 million in onetime county funding to jumpstartou implementation and at the same time identified the need for an ongoing source of funding because an ongoing problem cannot be effectively addressed with onetime funding. In march of 2017 Los Angeles County voters somewhat miraculously in an off year low turnout election by aur margin f 70 approves measure h at one quarter special sales tax generating ant estimated 355 million annually for 10 years legally dedicated to preventing and combating homelessness. We told the voters than the first five years of measure h we would help 45,000 family members and individuals move from homelessness into permanent housing and in fact in the first 21 months Supportive Services and rental services from july 2017 to march of 2019 could we help 14,241 individuals and family members move from homelessness into permanent housing. We are in track to meet our goal of 45,000 in that same 21 month period measure eight helped over 28,000 family members and individuals in to move into interim housing. However as you have heard despite this extraordinary after by an extraordinary movement,s movement that doubled the number of family members and individuals moving from homelessness into permanent housing since 2015, the number of people experiencing homelessness and Los Angeles County roads between january 2018 in january 2019 by 12 . Now as has been noted our neighboring counties in Southern California and the urban counties in the california bayun area experienced a much larger increases, typically 20 to 40 increases over the same period of time could without measure h we experienced similarly large increases. The fundamental problem is in flow. As noted earlier in 2018, 133 family members and individuals every day move from homelessness into permanent housing. Every day 150 people became homeless. That difference, 17 more People Per Day becoming homeless accounts for that increase in our Homeless Population. The fundamental reason for that increase is economics. People are unable to pay their rent because the Housing Market governed by the laws defined of man we had a shortage of Affordable Housing and rents are increasing in such a way it is both forcing people who are currently renting out of their homes and making it impossible for lowincome households to secure new rental housing which they can afford. As was previously mentioned we are in a paradoxical situation in Los Angeles County. Since two days ago the Los Angeles Times ran a headline that said communities across the Uniteded States looked to Los Angeles County as a beacon of Effective Practice in combating homelessness and get after the city of new york we have theit largest Homeless Population in the United States. This paradox is attributable to inflow. We are bailing more water out of homeless homes than ever before but the hole in the bottom of our boat is so large that there is more water seeping into our boat. Congresswoman waters, h. R. 1856 exemplifies the sort of old major action we need from the federal government to partner with us in the 88 cities, the county of los angeles and are hundreds of community and faithbased partners as part of this countywide movement to bring our homeless endeavor home. Thank you very much. Let me introduce you to two members from Los Angeles County delegate that have joined us. We just been joined by congressman brad sherman. I now will recognize myself for five minutes and im going to go first back to you mr. Ansell. He described a very well what was happening in the county of los angeles. Id like to know more information about measure h that was passed in 2017. Now i think its important for everyone to understand that we do have funding from the federal government for all of the United States of america through the Mckinney Fund so you get an allocation just as the city does. Ine addition to that i was just looking up how much money you received from the mckinneyvento grant that we sent out to all of our states. In addition to that you have measure h, is that correct . Panic yes, thats correct. Thank you said measure eight is 100 million . Congresswoman measure h is generating an estimated 355 million annually. Will you describe to us exactly how the 355 million is being spent . I thank you for the general overview of what the fees are but now you have started to apply that funding to various efforts of the county. Exactly what are they . Certainly congresswoman and thank you for the question. The measure h ordinance adopted by the y board of supervisors is november of 2016 with 21 specific strategies which measuring can be utilized and in the springun of 2017 a group of0 government and Community Stakeholders develop consensus recommendations to the board of supervisors regarding the utilization of that measure h funding across the 21 strategies for the first three years. The strategies for which most measure h funding is utilized include Homelessness Prevention for single adults and family members, disability benefit advocacy to assist homeless disabled adults to secure a supplemental security and veteranssa disability benefits. If i may i do understand the overall strategy and what you say was adopted. Can you be more specific about any monies that have been spent on a project in an effort of some kind . Yes maam, certainly. The two largest categories of measure h expenditures are for permanent housing. Have you constructed and developed a bill for permanent housing . We only utilize measure h for Capitol Construction to a very limited degree. So most of your money is spent on Supportive Services . Actually rental subsidies. How much money they spent on rental subsidies . In the prior year we have spent over 100 million. And that comes from measure h . Measure h. How much money is that . Over 1 million for rapid rehousing impermanent housing. Do you cooperate with the city of los angeles for example or building lowincome housing, permanent housing. Do you coordinate with them in order to provide the money for Supportive Services . Absolutely. Give me an example of that. The county is a memorandum of understanding with the city of los angeles where we have committed to provide intensive case Management Services for the tenant in 10,000 units per minute for Supportive Housing which the city of Los Angeleses has committed to creating in this decade including units funded through triple h. The basic model congressman as we use measure h to pay for the services and where necessary the rental subsidies and the city fund capitol and we also use other county funding under measure h for the capital cost of developing Supportive Housing and then we use federal rental subsidies. You said you do direct some of the measure h money to capitol. Only a very small portion. What portion . Again most of his Supportive Services. And rentald subsidies. And if you would reiterate how much you have spent on rental subsidies . With david go to and what is the criteria for that . Ri still in the past fiscal year we spend over 1 million on measure h for rental subsidies and services into categories or permanent Supportive Housing we provide Ongoing Services and where necessary use measure h to pay the rental subsidy. Spoony can you explain who qualifies for rental subsidies . For permanent way of the coordinate of entry system which is required by the federal government, which we use to families with individuals to permanent Housing Resources so from permanent Supportive Housing its those persons who are the most vulnerable and have the highest acuityth under our assessment tl for rapid rehousing which is a timelimited rental subsidy with timelimited service. We server range of families and adults experiencing homelessness representative al green from texas is also the chairman of the subcommittee on oversight andre investigation. Five minutes for questioning. Thank you madam chair and i think the witnesses forai appearing as well. Madamg chair i would like to sy that im a person who supports your bill, the ending homelessness at and heres why. The senator is eminently correct this is bigger than any one single crisis. Its an Affordable Housing crisis. Its a lowwage crisis, and a Mental Health crisis, Substance Abuse crisis, and incarceration crisis and its also a discrimination crisis. It really is comparable to a disaster. It is a disaster that is unnatural. For natural disasters we spend money for katrina over 100 billion, this spill is 13. 3 billion and it takes a holistic approach in dealing withro this unnatural disaster. But madam chair i am grateful that you have this spill and if i may i would just like to ask the panel are you familiar with this bill . If you are would you kindly extend a hand into the air, those who are familiar . Do you believe that this bill is a part of the solution to the crisis . If so, would you raise your hand please . Id like to know now i always like to fill the record, what about the ogp tq community . There was not a mention of the crisis with young people who happen to be ogp tq. I have information indicating that approximately 40 of the young people who are on the street homeless are a member of a lgbtq community. Do you have Additional Information you can share on this topic mr. Lynn . Representative grain the data that we have locally would indicate that the numbers less than that is substantially greater thane they population. The general population of youth who do not identify as male or female the nonthere nonbinary transgender youth and lgbtq represent a quarter of the youth in our population. Its ata tremendous overrepresentation against the general population prevalence and ipu think these use our particular vulnerability in there a number of reasons they may not fit in at home and may not feel welcome and may not guilt they. Violence is one of the main reasons for this population particular to end up homeless. We do have programs that specifically target than id like to call the people of the committee to the access rule that hud has proposed by thinks of its expected to come out in september but this is a very damaging proposal. But had move the nation forward in addressing the rights and axes of the Transgender Community in our shelter inventory and required all communities to provide equal access. That role is being rolled back and apple have devastating and lifethreatening consequences for our trans youth and trans adults nationally. Heres what i would like to do. Ive a staffer with me today and i will make sure the staffer visits with youou after this hearing to let me move quickly to the criminal record. I was a Small Claims Court judge and the Justice Court judge and i understand how people acquire criminal records for penalties that require a fine only and they go to jail not because of the fine initially but he could they dont show up in court. Im curious as to the number of people on the street that its because of the inability to pay a fine or because they were at some point charged with failure to appear in court. Sir, we dont have data specifically. A new comment a little bit closer to the microphone please . We dont have data specifically on that statistic that i will say of a single adults who are on sheltered our population was which is the vast majority of people experiencing homelessness, 63 have a history ofes incarceration so there is a very large overrepresentation of people who are homeless and people who have some degree of involvement within the criminal Justice System. Where it devastating consequences. People lose time in their jobs and they get fired and people lose their apartments for not meeting those requirements but i dont have specific date on the people aree homeless. I would yield back madam chairman and i will make sure we get with you. Would you provide something more for me in writing . I will yield back madam chairman. Fo thank you very much. The chair now recognizes representative Sylvia Garcia from texas who is a member of the Services Committee for five minutes for questions. Thank you madam chair and thank you so much for your leadershipuc and your district paid your efforts in making homelessness a top priority for our committee is significant not only for the city but cities across america. Your leadership in holding one of her first hearings on the subject in making sure the committee passed the ending homelessness act as our first markup is monumental. Im here to listen today and i appreciate from everyone their time here today and appreciate yourvi moving personal stories along with policy recommendations that people are making. Two weeks ago i went to detroit and learned about how the financial crisis are still pushing people out off their illegally. 11 years after the great recession. Today im learning about the many challenges that los angeles is facing with homelessness up for the last year and over 58,000 residents and l. A. County by comparison in my area that number is less than 4000. This is a homeless problem that is much worse than we face in houston not to say but i want to understand what are the best policy solutions. As a former social worker and also now vice chair of the majority Leaders Task Force on urban poverty and now we need to look his on supporting Reference Services at the local level to fully address the immediate needs of people and the homeless cycle while also looking at what Structural Reforms were mentioned. We can make sure people are driven to homelessness in the first place. This committee and this congress as a whole need to look at only the shortterm but more importantly the longterm challenges so we can offer a National Policy option to make sure that every American City is facing this crisis to deal with this. First i want to. Start by saying that in my mind the homeless issue in housing crisis in this country is a civil rights issue that we mustt tackle firsthand. Id like to start this morning with asking mr. Murray a question. Mr. Murray i am a former state senator and id like you worked on many of the issues we are talking about here today. While i have not had a chance to only visit your city i did have the staff tried me to by this skid row that everyone keeps talking about. Not like anything ive seen before and i just wanted to ask you a question about this whole notion of wrap around services. What is the greatest need in our system today that we need to make sure that we put in place not only in your city but cities across america will face as the challenges los angeles does . I think its a variety of rings and its just depending on the client, at least on my view. Down on the ground we have shelter people who literally dont have any services and just want sustenance for that night in its very hard to convince them of convince them and then want to turn their lives around so those people issuesvere Mental Health some of those people at Substance Abuse issues. The other factor is if they are on the street more than one year more than likely they have developed some sort of trauma which leads to ptsd are some other Mental Health problem. If your look looking for single thing i would say making sure we include in the wrap around service Mental Health. Some are going to be ptsd and some are just going to be life skills but after l youve been t on the streets for years sometimes you need some help just becoming a Good Neighbor so that you are more likely to thrive in your new housing place. Thank you. Ms. Viehland are you familiar with the proposed rule making from the Current Administration on frankly taking out 60,000 children across america out of Public Housing . If you are familiar with that what impact would it have on this city andam this county . Im familiar for proposed rules for mixed families as well as the immigration proposed rules. I can share with you what the impact would be in the city of los angeles and Public Housing. The proposal for mixed families that would impact 11,000 individuals in Public Housing and section 8 program. It supports immigration rule that would impact 18 thousands of these are two separate members potentially impacting more than 30,000 individuals in a household. With the regulation put in place how many of those are children of . Or the mixed family couple thousand. For the proposed immigration rule we are talking about 3000. Are you talking about the public charge rule . So both wouldub have a severe impact. Absolutely. Thank you but i yield back. Thank you very much for the chair recognizes senator brad sherman from the 30th district of california who serves on the Financial Services committee for five minutes of questions. Thank you for the homeless issue is a combination of issues some are homeless because of Substance Abuse and psychological problems and trauma. Some are mostly homeless because the rent is too high. [applause] they cant afford it and im going to focus on this panel on that second group of people who would be in an apartment if we had wichita rents but we have los angeles rams. I would say to this group of Homeless People its just the tip of the iceberg. For every person sleeping in their car or sleeping in the park there are 10 people who can barely afford their rent. There are 10 people who have an unlawful detainer that they are worried about and they had a payday lender. There are 10 people who are cutting back on their medications so they canan pay their rent. There are 10 people sleeping on their friends couch. We only see the folks that are absolutely homeless. But for so many people the rent is too high. And its a problem that we face in a number of exhibits the particularly here in los angeles and some of it relates to the relatively unique factors here. One is we are the biggest city in the World Without a separated rail system sony time you try to build something the first reaction is not that person is going to be with me on the train. No, that person is going to be in a car in front of me on the freeway. We have nimby who wont let you build are people who think my Property Values will go down unless the people who live near me are richer than i am. Youve got the physical location of landuse planning where every city is told that he can attract an auto dealer to get more money and accosted almost nothing. If you accommodatet housing on that same property you get no extra money for your city budget because the property tax goes elsewhere and its going to cost you some money. What im going to focus on here is impact fees. If you want to build an apartment, and we need money to run the government. We should tax people based on their ability to pay. We have something it does i call the state income tax. Instead in part we are taxing people in on their ability to build and those costs are passed through. Ms. Miller the l. A. Times had a headline. One recent housing is so expensive in california, counties and cities charge developer fees. Local impact fees impact weather project gets built and if the law of supplyf and demand is operative, if we can get more supplies it would include not only themo people who live in tt new unit but it will bring supply demand and cost down. What this l. A. Done to mitigate impact fees as a barrier to development particularly the development of low income Affordable Housing. Thank you for your question but i will start by saying the city of l. A. Is committed to removing regulatory barriers in building housing at ain cheaper rate a keeping costs low particularly so they dont get passed on to the tenants. I will talk about for years in which we are working to streamline the development of new housing in the city of l. A. The first thing ill start with is executive director 13 produces aex prescient measue it Affordable Housing of the topoftheline. Let me interrupt when youre talking about streamlining things. Somebody wants toreng build an Apartment Units in the san fernando valley, taffet fee is imposed for unit for them to be allowed to build it . What is thehe impact see it . Sir, i can get i. T. With more details in terms of a breakdown of what the fees are. I do want to comment. Its not the pcs will be passed onto the consumer. Its that the building wont he built. Everybody will pay higher rent because the supply of units will be down while the demand is stillan up. You will try to tell us what the fee is. We can never achieve housing officer provide it. Eight please refrain from interrupting the questions in the response. What i can say is there is a fee in which we are championing as it promotes equitable building and that is our Affordable Housing fee so it there is a afford the housing linkage fee which gives multifamily developers a choice. They can either include lowincome students in our project or they can put in the fort mill Housing Trust fund which creates more housing. Thank you very much. The chair now recognizes representative judy chu for five minutes. Will thankio you Congress Member waters for holding this very important hearing and also for your incredible leadership on your very important bill to combat homelessness. But like to address a question to ms. Lares. Los angeles county we have an unprecedented number of homeless but we also still see an increase in the number of people experiencing homelessness in our country which it ran 12 last year. For my area homelessness grows even faster but i do have positive news about one city in my district which is the city of pasadena which saw 1 decrease in its homeless camp this year. They attribute much of this progress to the success of terminus Supportive Housing. They say it provides stable housing to formerly Homeless Individuals and families and offer Services Like Employment Training and health care onsite the model can really work as we have a near 100 retention rate among residents. And of course we have such incredible nonprofits like Union Station services for the homeless which like so many Supportive Services for the homeless. We talked about permanent afford of housing. Why is it important and how does it play ajo major role in combating homelessness and what can the federal government do to increase it . You are exactlyms correct. The city of pasadena has uses section 8 Housing Choice Voucher Program to provide permanent Supportive Housing just as you describedt. It. They accused every possible voucher available. My understanding is that they are reaching the. They are allowed 20 of their vouchers and theres recently at 10 fund for housing Homeless Individuals. One big benefit or one big asset to housing authorities would have is to increase the number of vouchers and also increase the caps that go along with it as well. That affects all of our communities across the country. Thank you for that. Senator murray i would like to talk to you about foster youth who are at heightened risk of homelessness and how the federal esvernment can better serve them in fact i sit on the Ways Means Committee and have jurisdiction over foster youth and im a member of the Congressional Congress on and in a recent survey of from the voices of youth counsel 29 of 13 to 25 girls experience homelessness and they reported spending time in the Child Welfare system. In your experience providing service too individuals at the weingarten sender how can the federal government improved support for foster youth so they dont experience homelessness . Again once they have gotten to where they are experiencing homelessness but one of the things we can do is fund more specific things directed toward that. Vote theth county that have h Youth Programs in a previous life as you may know foster children in foster care was one of my big projects but i think it even gets worse if you talk about transitional age youth who were also lgbtq as acus they are particularly vulnerable out on the streets. Just specific funding and specific mentalhealth funding for their specificec issue i thk helps the problem butut we do he two bolster up and as we are talking about Public Policy matters which are not necessarily dealing with the homeless but dealing with past homelessness you really need to invest money in where do people who aid to the Foster Care Center go . Bather into the homeless system or the criminal Justice System and a thing to the extent that when we a put a child in foster care and again ive spent time in the courtsso in my early carr when it put a kid in foster care we become their parent and we are doing a horrible job of it taste upon the numbers in foster care. Ht we have to put some money into when they are getting ready to age out, some transitional money tifor them so they dont experience homelessness. Thank you. I yield back. Thank you very much. The chair now recognizes will representative Nanette Barragan for five minutes for questions. Thank you for holding this hearing and for your bill on the antihomelessness act of 2019. I often hear in my Congressional District and the town halls what is going on . What iss happening . Why is it getting worse and why with the propositions we passed, why does it feel like its not getting any better . Its a challengingy question and we have heard a little bit today maybe one of you can talk a little bit about what they impact will having her bill passed in helping address the homeless crisis for the city of and county of los angeles. Ms. Miller do you want to take this . Thank you. What i will start by saying is we have spent the last two Years Holding a system to respond to the crisis. We are scaling that system up as we speak. What the system has told us is that there are 31,000 people in the system right now who have an outreach by worker so more than likely when youre on the streets for an encampment more than light bathed abatement such by the system. There are some odd reason assistance helping them somewhere. They have gathered their documents needed to get into housing whether income verification, drivers license i. D. , they are ready to go. The problem is the bottleneck of not having enough housing them to exit the system. What we find similar in our shelter f systems there are peoe ready to go. They have parttime jobs. They are engaged in services. They have the mentalhealth support that they need but there is no permanent destination forp them. So the neck ms. Miller if you could just address what the chairwomans bill that would do. That influx of 13 billion how would that help what you are trying to do . Thank you so much. I would say the biggest gap we have right now is the rental subset that will subsidy that they can apply to unit in the community and get them into housing. I think the chairwomans bill for Affordable Housing would be critical to getting a throughput in our system that we are like right now. Thank you but one of the things we havent mentioned is how congresswoman waters not just on this issue but on the cuts that have been proposed. This president fiscal year 2020 budgetet requested to actually dramatically cutut housing that helps families that are low income seniors, many people with disabilities, families with children and veterans. Overall the administrations cuts to the hud program ane astonishing 9. 6 billion. That would be devastating and wo thats why its so critically important we have hearings like this and we have everybody make sure that theydy are participatg engaged so that we can help fight back against these proposed cuts. We hear proposal after proposal that would only negligibly impact all the work for the people on thisth panel are doing and ms. King viehland would you like to comment on what would happen and how the problem would get worse if we have a sexual cut of 9. 6 billion to the hud program . We talked about the fact that we had moree than 10,000 units n permanent Supportive Housing in the pipeline we talked about a critically important that those units are. Without vouchers and subsidies those units dont come on. Those beyond the discussion of impact fees and other costs related to rising housing costs. If we dont have the vouchers and the rentall subsidies to be able to put those people in two units those dont get billed. Thank you. Ms. Lares youve done fabulous work. Can you give us an update on where we areca bad and when aree going to see people moving into that facility . Absolutely. We welcome you to join us on movein day. We have made a lot of progress with the new housing there. We willth be ready to move our first families into the new units this fall, september or october so right around the corner. We intended to provide indications to families. Phase one and phase two of jordan dow and other phases as you are well aware we obviously see one unit that exceeds that amount. Currently there are 140 torn down and those will have 1400 units. The i thank you. I will yield back my time. Thank you very much. The chair now recognizes representative jimmy gomez of the 34th district of california for five minutes of questions. Madam chair thank you so much for posting this important hearing. I got elected to congress in july of 2017 when i was sworn in. It was one of the first elections after the president ial and i represent downtown, thing from hancock park to very wealthy neighborhoods to skid row to Laurel Heights and eagle rock. I see a variety of issues. One of the things that i try to work on since i was a student at ucla was the issue of housing. Iraq ignite early on if we had no housingha policies in the ste of california. The housing policy was built out as far as the eye can see so you can reduce the rensin the pressure in the big cities. How do i know back . My family when they were living in Orange County gulf war stopper the house that lived in god hold those interned into a taco bell. Imagine that, a taco bell. When my parents g went out to riverside and got appearance there got a home there, it was relatively affordable but the that releaseal valve no lonr really exists. In riverside and San Bernardino counties they are having higher rent increases percentagewise than in the city of l. A. County. So it doesnt exist and this is a problem that Everybody Knows was years in the making. Skid row is going to didnt come out of nowhere produces strategic strategy by thetr city of l. A. To provide resources. We act like this thing came out ofe nowhere but it is something that decisionmakers over the years have created. Like it or not everybody is responsible for it so what are we going too do now is the question. There is no other that has this kind of issue. Ive a friend of director of Housing Community development for the governor, previously Governor Brown and now keviner newsom. He said there is no otheras stae that has this type of problem. I read we have a lot of albums and we have to look at a multimodal approach. I agree with that but we have to start thinking outside of theav box and maybe it is time to break the wheel when it comes to the merrygoround of homelessness andes housing and keep it going over and over and over and it seems like we are losing ground. One of the issues, we heard something mr. Ansell mentioned the county provides services and some rental assistance. I take it you meant the city of l. A. Is responsible for capitol development. One of the things that i want to know is what are the other cities and l. A. County doing when it comes to providing its because i know not everybody scaring their fair share. Thank you congressman. If i could just clarify my prior comment. Those in the city of los angeles in the county of los angeles earned testing testing very heah locally generated in state funding for the development of permanent Supportive Housing. My comment previously was with respect to proposition aaa too and as we lock in for permanent Supportive Housing how was the countyer collaborating and in tt regard yes we are providing Supportive Services that go along with those new guinness. With respect to the other 87 cities in the counties we have seen cities have a central role to play in this countywide effort and can reach out an unprecedented way to cities across the counties to engage. The county is funded in 40 cities in the county develop this Pacific League the Housing Program and is allocated a portion of measure h funding to the cities to support implementation the implementation of those homelessness plans for the single biggestig focus of the cy of homelessness plans and the county funding provided by the cities is the c support and utilization of their landuse authority in a way that will result in the production of additional permanent Supportive Housing, Affordable Housing and other interim housing. That could include forte example feasibility studies of individual governmentowned parcels for examples that could be used for housing or to help small cities modified landuse ordinances. For example relative to Motel Conversion or permanent Supportive Housing for dwelling units. What i would say is on the one hand we are engaged with smaller cities throughout the county in an unprecedented way and if you havent done theres an unprecedented level of interest by many cities i in this challee and constructively discussing the homeless crisissn including increasing housing in on the other hand we have a very long way to go in ensuring the cities throughout the county exercise their landuse authority in a way that maximizes the need for housing. Er state properties that were supposed to be used for housing and they are not using it. That is a big problem. With that, i yield back. Rep. Waters the chair now recognizes mrs. From the 32nd district from california. Thankri you for all your hard work on the committee. We know theres a great amount of homeless in Los Angeles County and recently change strategies preventing this. And more holistically than poverty. The deal more for the city to work with the cities and agencies . Should lose anybody come together and talk to the group and say lets start a program. Because Mental Health in washington and is the thirdlargest of homelessness and Mental Health. We must include in our program care of thee problem before gets worse. And sometimes start the program and no longer looks at uniting to find out how they can keep peoplele in home if they have a help disease, accident, all the things kevin talked about the can paper one or two months rent so they can stay home and not go homeless. We should be able to make a difference in keeping people in home also, places for homeless to go to in the riverbend, near hospitals but we would also talk to river road and caltrans and others to find out what properties they have that can be ayed to build all this near everyone but they would have additional housing proved what can we do, what are you doing to do that . Thank you for the question, i think to your original question, theres a great deal that is happening from a regional perspective and it is served at infrastructuren so we are working in partnership with her partner at theou homels initiative, we work with others and were implement to programs in a much more systematicc way. And that i think has been helpful so as i mentioned earlier with the homeless. Incentive program in l. A. County alone . No countywide, there are 18 other housing authorities that are operating within and one of the things that is great is we are working with them with a program that looks the same for client whether they come in through our door. The program is seamless and runs the same. So the idea is to create a regional approach to these issues. And most of the development we have projects and partners with the city of l. A. And the work that were doing the city of pasadena, glendale and other cities as well. Were taking a countywide approach to addressing the issues. Will you include communications to the city of what you are doing . Some of them do another stop. I need to know what information is going to t the city to make them aware. They also have the homeless transitioning. Yes congressman, homeless initiative, we have veryng actively engaged throughout the region and we have convened to homeless summits, theio firster and we have a designated liaison for each of the cities and we invited all of the cities in the county to develop their own homelessness plan with funding from the county. We work for the government to provide ongoing we provide funding to the cost to courtney the efforts in their cities and then as a mentor weve approved funding to those cities that develop plans to support implementation. I like to know more about those because i have incurred information going back to me but not necessarily with the cost but its important that we understand they are part of it, and maybe the representative does not attend. But we need to make sure. The homeless situation is critical and worse in the valley. Madam i yield back. They can very much. First i like to think our first panel for the testimony today wr wi
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