Working Group Overview
The Homelessness Working Group meets on the second and fourth Thursday of each month, from 6pm – 7:30pm. Please join our mailing list for up-to-date meeting information, as some months may change.
Learn more about the committee and see where you can join us at upcoming meetings and events.
Upcoming Meetings & Events
About the Working Group
The EC Homelessness Working Group educates constituents about policies, programs and advocacy opportunities that would further collective action and solutions to address homelessness. The working group is dedicated to understanding the root causes of homelessness*, advocating for more resources to the multifaceted response to the homelessness crisis (street strategy, interim housing, permanent housing, and prevention, with supportive services embedded throughout), and providing leadership around mobilizing and educating the community around needed policy changes.
Goals:
- Educate and inform the community on the root causes of homelessness and evidence-based solutions and good practices.
- Facilitate community discussion and engagement on policies and initiatives related to homelessness.
- Advocate with the community for policies and more resources to fund the multifaceted response to the homelessness crisis.
Issues:
- Establishing a legislative, policy and budgetary framework to create a Right to Housing that ensures that everyone who lives in Los Angeles has a right to a safe and stable dwelling.
- Monitoring the work of the City Council Homelessness and Poverty Committee and supporting policy actions to further solutions to the homelessness crisis.
- Scaling up the local response with an infusion of State and Federal resources – street strategy, interim housing, permanent housing and prevention, with supportive services embedded at every stage.
- Understanding the recommendations of the Ad Hoc Committee on Black People Experiencing Homelessness and supporting the action plan that is being created.
- Investing in affordable housing, living wage jobs, Alternatives to Incarceration (such as the Office of Diversion and Re-entry and the Behavioral Health Center) and healthy communities to stem the flow into homelessness.
*Ranging from zoning changes in the 1970s that constrain the supply of affordable housing to the severe cuts in the 1908s to federal funding for housing construction and rental subsidies to the decline in wages since the 1970s.