Four Cities, One Question: What Would LA Look Like If We Actually Tried These Ideas Here?

"The pieces fit together in ways that the individual articles didn't have space to show." | Photo by Tara Winstead

Letters to the Housed by Paul Asplund of SecondGrace.LA

Over the past month I've taken you through four cities in the Institute of Global Homelessness's 2026 Vanguard Cities report, each one doing something about homelessness that LA either won't or hasn't tried. Lisbon built social enterprise restaurants that employ people recovering from homelessness. Buenos Aires redesigned its entire intake system around no-exclusion criteria during an economic collapse. Greater Manchester invested in preventing youth homelessness before it starts. And Santiago created a dedicated Housing First construction budget that doesn't compete with the general affordable housing pipeline.

None of these cities has solved homelessness. All of them are making measurable progress with fewer resources than we have. This week I want to lay out what it would look like if LA borrowed from all four, because the pieces fit together in ways that the individual articles didn't have space to show.

Where We Stand

LA's new Department of Homeless Services and Housing launched January 1, 2026 with an $843 million spending plan and a $200 million shortfall. More than 30 programs were eliminated. The 2025 homeless count showed 72,308 people experiencing homelessness countywide — a modest 4% decline — that RAND found undercounted by 32%. Federal funding is under direct attack from the Trump administration's executive order on homelessness, which conditions HUD grants on treatment-first approaches and bans harm reduction language. And the county has issued a strategy report advising cities on clearing encampments near Olympic venues, with no new funding attached.

That's the backdrop. Now here's what we could build instead.

A Four-Part Blueprint

1. Stop the inflow: a Manchester-style youth prevention system

Greater Manchester's Pathfinder program gives every at-risk young person a consistent coach who stays with them, pays providers for outcomes rather than enrollment, and shares data across all ten boroughs in real time. It launched as a £663,000 pilot ($890,000 USD) and contributed to a 42% reduction in rough sleeping since 2017.

In LA, RAND found that transition-age youth in the foster care system moved an average of 15 times in a year. One in four of the 1,000 young people who age out of LA County's foster system annually report being homeless between ages 21 and 23. Every one of them who becomes chronically homeless costs the system orders of magnitude more than prevention would have. LA launched an Office of Transition Age Youth in November 2025, but it's not the coordinated, outcomes-based, region-wide system Manchester built.

2. Redesign intake: a Buenos Aires-style no-exclusion system

Buenos Aires's Care Network admits everyone, classifies its 58 Social Inclusion Centers by population — families, single men, women, older adults, people in recovery, people with mental health needs — keeps families together, and incorporates harm reduction throughout. Within eight months they expanded capacity 30% and cut hotline response time 30%. Meanwhile, Proyecto 7 showed that people with lived experience can run residential programs better than government did.

In LA, our Coordinated Entry System remains a bureaucratic maze. Families are separated in many shelters. Services are poorly segmented by population. And there is no equivalent of Proyecto 7's resident-run model operating at scale.

3. Build the employment bridge: a Lisbon-style social enterprise network

CRESCER's É Um Restaurante trained people experiencing homelessness in full-spectrum restaurant work and placed 68% into the broader job market. It sits on top of their Housing First program, where substance use dropped from 90% to 45% and medication adherence went from 10% to 96% — with no treatment mandate.

LA's restaurant industry is in crisis: 82% of businesses negatively impacted by immigration enforcement, 70% experiencing staffing shortages, dozens of closures in 2025. We have Homeboy Industries, Hayes Valley Bakeworks, the Hospitality Training Academy, Chrysalis, the Downtown Women's Center, and LA:RISE. What's missing is a single social enterprise restaurant built specifically for people recovering from homelessness that combines all of these elements on top of Housing First.

4. Build dedicated housing stock: the Santiago model

Chile created a national Housing First program with a dedicated construction budget that doesn't compete for units in the general affordable housing pipeline. They partnered with 15 NGOs and worked with landlords to reduce prejudice before rolling the program out. Seven to eight out of ten participants haven't returned to the streets.

In LA, new building permits in the first half of 2024 were 60% lower than five years ago, and it costs $700,000 to $800,000 per unit. California's Homekey+ program is converting motels at $144,000 per unit — a fraction of new construction. We need more of that creative thinking, plus dedicated stock that's built for Housing First programs rather than competing with every other affordable housing need.

How the Pieces Fit Together

"LA's current system is missing at least two of these four stages entirely — prevention and dedicated employment pipelines — and doing the other two with less coordination and more barriers than any of the Vanguard Cities."

These four approaches would offer a pipeline.

Prevention (Manchester) reduces the number of people entering the system. No-exclusion intake (Buenos Aires) catches everyone who does fall through, classifies them by need, and keeps families intact. Housing First with dedicated stock (Santiago) gets people housed quickly without competing for units in the general pipeline. And employment bridges (Lisbon) give people a path to economic independence so they don't cycle back.

Backing all of this up: shared data across providers — like Sydney's By-Name-List where 20+ organizations see the same information about the same individuals. And lived experience leadership, not as advisory boards that get ignored, but as the kind of operational authority that Proyecto 7 exercises in Buenos Aires and that Uruguay's NITEP network was founded on.

The Olympics Deadline

"Do we spend the next two years sweeping people from one location to another so the cameras don't catch them? Or do we use the Olympic deadline as the urgency we've never been able to manufacture on our own?"

Two years from now, LA hosts the world. The county's strategy report focuses on clearing encampments near venues. The New Republic documented how every modern Olympics displaces homeless populations. NBC Los Angeles projected there could still be 30,000 people experiencing homelessness in LA by 2028. The Economic Roundtable found that 70% of people sleeping outdoors are homeless for the first time and their median monthly income is $387.

The question is simple. Do we spend the next two years sweeping people from one location to another so the cameras don't catch them? Or do we use the Olympic deadline as the urgency we've never been able to manufacture on our own?

Lisbon used its restaurant industry as a vehicle for employment. Buenos Aires redesigned its system during a fiscal crisis worse than ours. Manchester invested in prevention at a fraction of what crisis response costs. Santiago built dedicated housing without waiting for the general pipeline to catch up.

None of them waited for perfect conditions. All of them decided that the urgency of the moment made action more necessary, not less.

What Comes Next

"Change starts with information, and information starts with people who care enough to pay attention."

I'm not going to pretend that a newsletter can change county policy. But I know from years of doing this work that change starts with information, and information starts with people who care enough to pay attention.

If you're a service provider, look at the models in this series and ask what you could adapt. If you're a restaurant owner or chef, consider what a social enterprise training partnership could look like with your business. If you're a voter, ask your city council member and county supervisor why LA doesn't have a coordinated youth prevention program, an outcomes-based commissioning model, or a no-exclusion intake system. If you're someone with lived experience, know that you belong at the center of this work — not at the margins of it.

At SecondGrace.LA, we're building the community that connects these ideas to the people who can implement them. We're not waiting for Washington. We're not waiting for the county. We're doing what Buenos Aires did, what Lisbon did, what Manchester did: we're starting with what we have, where we are, and building from there.

The world is showing us what works. And the only question that remains is whether we're willing to try.

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

In love and service, Paul