The Six Prototypes: What SPA 4 Designed from Letters to the Housed by Paul Asplund
We were asked to imagine what was possible. What we created was both a blueprint for transformation and a record of what could have been. Illustration by delux multimedia.
Part 4 of a 6-part series on community co-design of LA County's Department of Homelessness Services and Housing
Dear readers,
"And then they came for the journalists…" Another rough morning as more journalists are detained by the FBI, this time in defiance of a judge's order and without charges even needing to be filed. Four Black journalists, Don Lemon the best known among them, all reporting on the events in Minnesota. (See the article at Raw Story.)
Today's nationwide general strike is underway, and it won't be the last such action until we rid ourselves of this administration.
But don't expect the Democrats to do anything brave, or upstanding, or noble. They're just trying to remain relevant in a town where they no longer wield any real power.
What we're doing here in LA is updating, organizing, and preparing ourselves for more and worse federal attacks. I still hold that the state murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis are the beginning of the end for the MAGAs, but I don't expect them to leave without bloodying a few more streets.
To mark this day, Tom Morello is holding a concert in Minneapolis and a few of my friends and family will attend, parents and children both. I couldn't be more proud.
"If it looks like fascism, sounds like fascism, acts like fascism, dresses like fascism, talks like fascism, kills like fascism and lies like fascism, boys and girls it's [expletive] fascism. It's here, it's now, it's in my city, it's in your city and it must be resisted, protested, defended against, stood up to, exposed, ousted, overthrown and driven out. By you and by me."
— Tom Morello
As for our beleaguered nonprofits here in LA, and the new DSHS, I've read, written about, and updated as much as I can in this fast-moving series of events in a world where I've come to expect change, if it happens at all, to take months, or years.
I'm just an opinion writer after all, and what was once a single story about my experience is now loaded with more current news than I can adequately report to you. I've also broken it into three parts so it's easier to read. I know how much media we're all absorbing right now and respect your time.
Thank you for reading and thanks for all of your comments. I read them, and appreciate you all.
Paul
Author's Note: This post reflects my personal observations, notes, and reflections from a collaborative design session I attended in September 2025. It represents my interpretation of the presentations and discussions, not an official record. Any errors or omissions are my own. The views expressed are mine and do not represent ChangeWell, LA County, or any affiliated organization.
Over two days in September 2025, approximately 100 of us from Service Planning Area 4 (central LA) gathered to reimagine LA County's homelessness response. We didn't know it then, but we were designing a lifeboat while watching the Titanic sink.
Two months before our convening, President Trump had signed an executive order ending federal support for Housing First—the evidence-based approach that had guided homelessness policy for two decades. In June, California's Legislature had eliminated the state's primary homelessness funding program for the coming year, cutting from $1 billion annually to zero. And the new county department we were designing? It would launch in January facing a $219 million deficit—a 25% cut before it even opened its doors.
We were asked to imagine what was possible. What we created was both a blueprint for transformation and a record of what could have been—if the money hadn't disappeared while we were still holding our markers.
The Context: Building a Department in Freefall
The formation of LA County's Department of Homelessness Services and Housing (HSH) represented a once-in-a-generation opportunity to rebuild our homelessness response from the ground up. After years of criticism about LAHSA's inefficiency and lack of accountability, the Board of Supervisors voted in April 2025 to create a new county department with direct oversight and consolidated authority.
The timing seemed perfect. Measure A—a quarter-cent sales tax approved by voters—was set to generate approximately $1 billion annually for homelessness services, affordable housing, and prevention programs. The new department would launch January 1, 2026, with a clean slate and clear mandate.
But between the April vote and our September design sessions, the ground shifted beneath us.
Federal Funding: The July Executive Order
On July 24, 2025, President Trump signed Executive Order 14321, titled "Ending Crime and Disorder on America's Streets." The order fundamentally rewrote federal homelessness policy:
Ended federal support for Housing First approaches
Required that recipients of homelessness assistance participate in mental health or substance abuse treatment as a condition of aid
Mandated that no more than 30% of federal grants could fund permanent housing
Eliminated automatic renewals—existing programs serving thousands would need to reapply
Prioritized funding for jurisdictions that enforce encampment bans and expand involuntary civil commitment
The National Alliance to End Homelessness warned that 170,000 people nationwide could lose their housing. In LA County, where federal Continuum of Care funding supports critical programs, providers faced an impossible choice: fundamentally alter evidence-based approaches or lose funding entirely.
The timing was deliberately cruel. Funding notices that normally go out in August were delayed until November—giving agencies just 60 days spanning Thanksgiving and Christmas to completely rewrite applications for programs they'd been building for years.
State Funding: California's Retreat
If the federal cuts were a gut punch, California's budget was a knife in the back.
The 2025-26 state budget, signed June 30, allocated $0 for the Homeless Housing, Assistance and Prevention (HHAP) program for the current fiscal year. HHAP had distributed $1 billion annually from 2021-2024, funding everything from outreach workers to shelter operations to permanent housing stabilization. The program had helped over 57,000 households exit homelessness since 2023.
The Legislature proposed $500 million for FY 2026-27—half the previous amount and not guaranteed. Local leaders warned the cuts would force shelter closures, program eliminations, and staff layoffs precisely when California needed to scale up services.
"I'm not interested anymore, period full stop, in funding failure."
— Governor Gavin Newsom
LA County: The Perfect Storm
And then there was the county itself.
Measure A was bringing in less revenue than projected—consumer spending was down in a tight economy, directly reducing sales tax receipts. The quarter-cent tax that was supposed to generate $1 billion annually wasn't hitting projections.
When HSH Director Sarah Mahin presented the proposed FY 2026-27 budget to the Board of Supervisors in January 2026, the numbers were devastating: a $219 million deficit requiring 25% cuts across the board.
The reductions would hit everywhere:
Pathway Home—the program that had housed 1,800 people from encampments since 2023—would be dramatically scaled back
Community outreach teams would be cut
Prevention programs would be eliminated
The focus would shift to simply maintaining existing placements—keeping people already housed from returning to the streets
"I am rather disgusted with the cutbacks. It is a new department with close to a $300 million deficit. And I know it is going to get tougher."
— Supervisor Hilda Solis
Designing While Everything Burns
This was the reality we didn't fully grasp in September 2025 when we sat in that community center with our Post-its and markers.
We knew changes were coming. The federal executive order had been signed two months earlier. California's budget had just passed. But we didn't yet know how deep the cuts would go. We didn't know that by the time our recommendations reached county leadership, HSH would be triaging which programs to save and which to kill.
ChangeWell Project, contracted by the county, gave us a different task: Don't design around scarcity. Design around what communities actually need. What would a truly effective, accountable, community-centered homelessness response system look like?
Our SPA 4 convening was one of eight happening across the county. Each tackled the same five design areas:
Strategies to Reduce Disparities — How to address racial and demographic inequities
Foundations for Success — Supporting all service providers regardless of size
Feedback and Ongoing Co-Design — Ensuring transparency and accountability
Collaboration and Partnerships — Breaking down silos between agencies
Systems & Systems Performance — Creating transparent pathways from outreach to housing
After a full day of problem-framing and visioning, we spent Day 2 creating prototypes—working documents that could actually be implemented.
Six teams presented. What they proposed wasn't just aspirational. It was a record of what we know works, what communities desperately need, and what we're about to lose. I'll write more about each area in future articles, but here's a brief rundown to help set the stage:
The Six Prototypes
Six teams presented designs addressing the five priority areas. Each will get its own detailed analysis in future articles, where I'll compare what we designed against what the department actually implemented. For now, here's what we proposed:
1. Breaking Down the Silos: The Collaborative Partnerships Team
Addressing: Collaboration and Partnerships
The first team tackled fragmentation—service providers competing for limited resources, county departments operating in parallel universes, grassroots organizations doing heroic work with no connection to official systems. Their solution: a dedicated partnerships team that would bring everyone to the same table monthly, with accountability mechanisms requiring the county to actually respond to what they heard.
The goal was culture shift—moving from competitive scarcity to genuine collaboration.
2. Putting Data in People's Hands: The Universal Data System
Addressing: Systems & Systems Performance
The second team addressed one of the system's most frustrating failures: data systems that serve everyone except the people they're supposed to help. Their prototype would let participants access their own files, see their service history, and receive alerts when housing matches become available.
The deeper principle: Data ownership is power. When people can access their own information, they become partners in their journey rather than passive recipients of services someone else controls.
3. Transparent Power: The Decision-Making Matrix and Co-Design Team
Addressing: Feedback and Ongoing Co-Design
This was the most politically charged prototype: a mechanism to make county funding decisions transparent and give community members genuine decision-making authority. When programs get funded or cut, the rationale would be visible. A co-design team with equal voting power—county and lived experience representatives—would shape the criteria.
This was the only prototype that directly confronted the question of who decides.
4. Paying the True Cost: Equitable Contracting and Provider Supports
Addressing: Foundations for Success
This team addressed a fundamental injustice: contracts that don't cover the actual cost of providing services. Providers regularly take out lines of credit to cover what contracts don't pay.
Their solution was twofold: an independent study of what services actually cost (with the department committing to pay those rates), and a menu of supports—barrier busting, clinical backup, workforce development—that the county would provide to help agencies succeed rather than just demanding compliance.
5. Communities Within the System: The Cultural Care Unit
Addressing: Strategies to Reduce Disparities
This team proposed a cultural care unit staffed with people immersed in the communities being served—LGBTQ+ individuals, immigrants, survivors of gender-based violence, veterans, formerly incarcerated people. The unit would bring county leadership to community spaces for listening sessions, not the other way around, with required reporting on what was heard and what's being done.
What made this unique: The team designed for adaptability, recognizing that priority populations will shift as the landscape changes.
6. Building Villages: Community Engagement and Homes Events
Addressing: Systems & Systems Performance, Collaboration and Partnerships, and Feedback and Ongoing Co-Design
The final prototype was the most ambitious—rebuilding community trust through transparency, accessibility, and genuine human connection. A 24/7 digital toolkit for self-navigation. Regular town halls. And twice-yearly "Homes Events" modeled on community celebrations where thousands gather not just for resources but for relationship—where every person gets a volunteer companion who treats them like a valued human being.
The goal was restoring trust and shifting the narrative from stigma toward shared humanity.
What These Prototypes Represent
These six prototypes from SPA 4 were designed by people who knew the system's failures intimately—because they've lived them, worked in them, or witnessed their impacts daily—in the two-month window between California zeroing out HHAP funding and the November announcement of federal policy overhaul.
We were asked to imagine what was possible. We delivered concrete solutions with specific timelines, success metrics, and implementation plans.
Every single one of these prototypes addressed real problems with evidence-based solutions. Every single one included specific mechanisms for accountability and success measurement.
And every single one would cost money that was quickly evaporating even as we wrote our proposals on giant sheets of butcher paper.
But SPA 4 was just one of eight SPAs going through this process. Throughout October and November, communities across LA County—from the San Fernando Valley to Long Beach, from the Westside to the San Gabriel Valley—were designing their own visions for HSH while federal and state funding collapsed around them.
Next in this series: What did the other seven SPAs propose? Where did we find common ground across all eight regions? Which innovations stood out as truly groundbreaking—regardless of where they came from? And how do you synthesize community wisdom when the money to implement it has already disappeared?
Part 5: Eight SPAs, One Vision — Finding Hope While Watching Funding Burn