The World Is Solving Homelessness. Why Isn't LA?

Letters to the Housed · by Paul Asplund of SecondGrace.LA

Comfortable. Insulated. Smiling. This is what willful blindness looks like. Visual by Delux Multimedia.

Two weeks ago, the LA County Board of Supervisors approved an $843 million spending plan for the brand-new Department of Homeless Services and Housing. Sounds like a lot of money. It is. But buried inside that number is nearly $200 million in cuts to homeless programs, more than 30 programs eliminated, and a budget deficit that's been patched together with one-time state grants and efficiency savings that won't be there next year.

The same week the Institute of Global Homelessness released their 2026 Vanguard Cities report, documenting how 11 cities across six continents are making measurable, documented progress toward ending homelessness. Not managing it. Ending it.

While the world moves forward, we're cutting our way backward. And I'm tired of pretending that's acceptable.

A Report the World Should Read

The IGH's Vanguard Program tracks homelessness initiatives across 18 cities on six continents. Their 2026 report isn't a wish list. It's a collection of case studies with data, outcomes, and replicable models from cities that decided to do something different — and then did it.

I've spent the last two weeks going through this report, and what struck me hardest wasn't the innovation. It was the ordinariness of it. These cities aren't doing anything magical. They're doing the things we already know work — Housing First, prevention, community engagement, lived experience leadership — and they're doing them with fewer resources than we have.

"These cities aren't doing anything magical. They're doing the things we already know work — and they're doing them with fewer resources than we have."

That's the part that should make every Angeleno angry.

Santiago, Chile: Housing First Without a Constitutional Right to Housing

Chile doesn't even have a constitutional right to housing.

In 2018, Chile launched Vivienda Primero, a national Housing First program targeting people over 50 who've been on the streets for five years or more. No requirements for sobriety or employment. This is the exact model the US is abandoning. Housing with teams of coordinators, psychologists, and occupational therapists — three professionals for every 20 participants — and the support to stay housed.

According to the IGH's Vanguard report, as of June 2025, 741 individuals have been housed in 374 accommodations across 36 municipalities. Seven to eight out of every ten participants have not returned to street homelessness.

Here's what made it work: Chile's Ministry of Social Development partnered with the Ministry of Housing to create a dedicated construction budget for the program. They didn't compete for units in the general affordable housing pipeline. They built what was needed. They also partnered with 15 NGOs for implementation and worked directly with landlords to reduce prejudice before rolling the program out.

Now look at LA. Our permanent supportive housing nationally shows up to 98% one-year retention when people get in, according to the National Alliance to End Homelessness. The pipeline is the problem. Prop HHH added roughly 3,000 new PSH units, and new building permits in the first half of 2024 were 60% lower than five years ago. Chile found a way to build dedicated housing stock for their program. We haven't.

"A country without a constitutional right to housing is outperforming the wealthiest city in the wealthiest state in the wealthiest country in the history of the world. Because they decided to act."

Greater Manchester: Preventing Homelessness Before It Starts

While LA will spend the vast majority of its $843 million on crisis response (and cut its prevention and outreach programs), Greater Manchester, England, decided to go upstream.

Their Homelessness Prevention Strategy, co-created with people with lived experience, launched a service called Pathfinder targeting 18-to-25-year-olds at risk of homelessness. The program was co-designed by the young people it serves. It uses outcomes-based commissioning, meaning providers get paid when they achieve results, not just for showing up. And it's backed by a real-time shared data system that lets everyone involved see what's working and what isn't.

The IGH report documents that 1,711 young people completed Initial Support Plans as of December 2024, with the majority achieving at least one housing outcome and at least one self-determined outcome. Since their 2017 peak, Manchester has seen a 42% reduction in rough sleeping.

Some of what they found is heartbreaking: 58% of the young people had left home because of family or relationship breakdown. 38% had been in the care system with what the evaluation called "poor" transition support. 20% were seeking asylum, many as unaccompanied minors.

LA has no equivalent coordinated youth prevention program at county scale. None. We don't have outcomes-based commissioning. We don't have a real-time shared data system — in fact, RAND Corporation found a 32% undercount in our 2025 Point-in-Time data compared to LA LEADS professional enumerations. In Skid Row, the PIT captured only 61% of what LA LEADS found.

Greater Manchester is a region of about 2.8 million people, comparable in scale to the city of LA's 3.9 million. They achieved a 42% reduction through coordinated prevention. Our 2025 count showed a 4% decline countywide. Manchester invested in prevention. We cut it.

Buenos Aires: Redesigning the System During a Crisis

This is the one that stopped me cold.

Buenos Aires completely redesigned their homeless response system in 2024 in the midst of an economic crisis.

They created a centralized Care Network — Red de Atención — with low-barrier admission and no-exclusion criteria. They classified 47 Social Inclusion Centers by subpopulation: families, older adults, single women. They incorporated harm reduction. They made a priority of keeping families together. And they opened their doors to people who'd been excluded from other services, including those with mental health and substance use challenges.

According to the IGH report, within eight months, Buenos Aires increased shelter capacity by 30%, decreased their hotline response time by 30%, and expanded their weekly caseload from 161 to 820 cases.

I've written before about the failures of 2-1-1 in LA — the call system that's supposed to connect people to services but too often connects them to voicemail, or worse, nothing at all. Buenos Aires cut their equivalent response time by 30% and increased their proactive caseload five-fold in eight months. With fewer resources and during a national economic collapse.

And here's the part that connects to what's happening in Washington: Buenos Aires's no-exclusion criteria directly contradicts what the Trump administration is forcing on us. The executive order signed in July 2025 attacks Housing First as "deprioritizing accountability." HUD's new Continuum of Care funding conditions require treatment-first approaches, ban harm reduction language, and impose binary sex definitions on shelter services. Twenty states have sued. Meanwhile, 170,000 people in permanent supportive housing nationally could lose funding as grants expire this year. LA's Continuum of Care alone received over $220 million from HUD in fiscal year 2024.

Buenos Aires proved you can redesign an entire system to be more inclusive, more responsive, and more humane — even when the money is tight. What's our excuse?

Lisbon: Housing First Plus a Path to Dignity

Lisbon might be the model that inspires me most, because it shows what's possible when you combine Housing First with something we almost never talk about: meaningful employment for people with lived experience.

Their Housing First program, É Uma Casa, launched in 2013 as a collaboration between the city government, the social security institute, and an NGO called CRESCER, has no entry requirements. CRESCER has full autonomy to identify individuals and integrate them into the program. By July 2025, 172 people had been housed.

But the numbers behind those 172 people tell the real story. According to the IGH's Vanguard report:

Health system engagement went from 17% to 71%
Social services use went from 38% to 89%
Family contact — people reconnecting with the people they love — went from 19% to 47%
Substance use dropped from 90% to 45%, without requiring treatment as a condition of housing
Medication adherence went from 10% to 96%

This isn't because people were coerced into compliance — the Trump plan — but because people were given stability, and stability changes everything.

Then in 2019, Lisbon launched É Um Restaurante — restaurants staffed by people with lived experience of homelessness (I've seen programs like this in San Francisco and notably within Homeboy Industries in LA). Certified training, psychosocial support, and a real pathway to employment. No requirements. In 2022, participants prepared over 62,000 meals, 68% of participants were integrated into the job market, and the program made 366 referrals to health, social, and housing services. It's expanded to four locations plus catering.

LA has restaurants, hotels, and a service industry that is desperate for workers. This model could thrive here. But it would require us to see people with lived experience as assets, not as problems to be managed.

The Evidence They're Ignoring

The evidence for Housing First is solid, universal, and beyond debate. Abandoning Housing First is purely punitive. A kind of stupidity where everyone is harmed. And more people will die alone on the streets as a direct result.

The CDC's Community Preventive Services Task Force found that every dollar invested in Housing First returns $1.44 in cost savings. In Charlotte, North Carolina, a Housing First program saved $2.4 million in a single year while tenants spent 1,050 fewer nights in jail and 292 fewer days in the hospital. A 2025 state-of-the-science review by Dr. Susan Collins at the University of Washington found Housing First effective in increasing stability up to six years after move-in. Finland reduced long-term homelessness by 68% between 2008 and 2022 using Housing First as national policy.

The IGH report itself notes that Housing First can save up to $23,000 per participant annually compared to traditional shelter programs.

"The IGH report notes that Housing First can save up to $23,000 per participant annually compared to traditional shelter programs."

And yet the Trump administration's executive order calls this approach a failure that "deprioritizes accountability." HUD is conditioning our federal funding on abandoning the model that every major study and every successful city in this report validates.

Chile is housing people at 70–80% retention rates with Housing First. Lisbon is cutting substance use in half without requiring treatment. Manchester is reducing rough sleeping by 42% through prevention. Buenos Aires is redesigning their entire system with no-exclusion criteria.

The United States is going backward. And LA — which should be leading the national response — is planning to sweep encampments for the Olympics.

The Olympics Clock Is Ticking

We can't talk about any of this without talking again about 2028. As I've addressed in previous articles on the post-Olympics reports coming out of Paris, we have a choice. We can improve people's lives with thoughtful application of successful programs, or we can double down on the harm, further breaking the trust that's required to help people recover from homelessness.

In January, LA County issued a strategy report advising local governments on clearing encampments near Olympic venues. No new funding attached. Just a plan to move people somewhere out of sight. @NOlympics LA called the encampment sweeps for the Super Bowl a "practice run" for what's coming.

Daniel Flaming and his team at the Economic Roundtable identified 10 concrete actions LA could take to host the Olympics with, as they put it, "clean hands." Their research found that the median monthly income of unsheltered individuals in LA is $387. And also that seventy percent of people sleeping outdoors are experiencing homelessness for the first time.

These aren't just the chronic cases that resist intervention — but the reality for what is probably over 100,000 Angelenos. A number that grows by nearly 200 people every day. There's no way we can expect someone who makes under $400 a month to afford rent here, or in any major city in America. Economic inequality drives the homelessness crisis in LA — not just a lack of housing but a lack of jobs. Our response has to be focused on opportunity, not punishment.

As I wrote about last fall, every modern Olympics has displaced homeless populations. London. Rio. Tokyo. We know what happens. The question is whether LA will be different. Right now, the answer is no.

What LA Could Do Tomorrow

We know what works. The IGH report gives us a roadmap drawn from 11 cities that are actually walking the path. If LA had the political will, we could start tomorrow.

A dedicated Housing First construction budget, like Santiago. Stop competing for units in the general pipeline. Build what's needed for the program.

A coordinated youth prevention program, like Manchester's Pathfinder. Co-designed by young people. Outcomes-based. With real shared data.

A redesigned intake and response system with no-exclusion criteria, like Buenos Aires. No one turned away. Services classified by population. Families kept together. Response times that actually improve.

An employment pipeline for people with lived experience, like Lisbon's É Um Restaurante. Training, support, and a real path to dignity through work.

A shared data system across all providers, like Sydney's By-Name-List, where 20-plus NGOs, hospitals, and government agencies all see the same information about the same individuals. No more siloed communications. No more people falling through cracks between organizations. (Better Angels, UCLA Community Health, and USC Street Medicine are all making great strides to end the siloing of information.)

Meaningful lived experience leadership in program design, like Uruguay's NITEP — a network founded by people living on the streets — and Mongolia's Ulziit-Asar, a peer-run program. Not advisory boards that get ignored. Actual decision-making power.

None of this is utopian. Every single item on this list is being done, right now, in cities with fewer resources than ours. The only thing LA lacks is the will.

What Comes Next

Supervisor Hilda Solis said it plainly: "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."

It will get tougher. Federal funding is under direct attack. State budgets are shrinking. Measure A revenue came in lower than expected. And the Olympics are two years away.

But Buenos Aires redesigned their system during an economic collapse because they decided that the crisis made the redesign more urgent, not less.

That's where we are. This is the moment where we decide what kind of city we want to be. The world is showing us what works.

And again, the question has never been whether ending homelessness is possible. The question is whether we're willing to try.

I think we are — we have to be. I think the 100,000 people sleeping on our streets tonight deserve at least that much from us.

"The question has never been whether ending homelessness is possible. The question is whether we're willing to try."

Join us at SecondGrace.LA. Be part of the community that's building what comes next.

In love and service, Paul

Next week: I'll go deeper into one of these city models and what it would actually take to implement it in LA. If you have a preference — Santiago's dedicated construction, Manchester's prevention, Buenos Aires's system redesign, or Lisbon's employment pipeline — let me know in the comments.

Sources and Further Reading

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