Glendale receives $2.4 million grant that will help support homeless services
Glendale’s service that guides and monitors the city’s homeless population received nearly $2.4 million in new and renewed grants this week from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, known as HUD.
The funds were awarded to the city’s Continuum of Care — the local system charged with coordinating funds for homelessness housing and services — and will support the numerous agencies that deal with the area’s homeless.
The grants come from the nearly $2 billion in funds allocated by President Obama for 7,600 homelessness-assistance programs nationwide.
“This year’s award demonstrates that HUD supports our work to house and serve our most vulnerable neighbors,” said Ivet Samvelyan, the city’s community services manager, in a statement.
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Glendale’s lead homelessness agency, Ascencia, will use portions of the grants to fund projects that include its Coordinated Entry System, which assesses and prioritizes those seeking relief, as well as permanent supportive housing and rapid rehousing programs, among others.
For Natalie Komuro, Ascencia’s executive director, the funds mean one thing: “relief.”
“I’m hoping it’s a demonstration of some stabilizing in this type of funding because HUD has gone through a lot of changes in its Continuum of Care funding over the years,” Komuro said. “They’ve been shifting money out of services [and] into paying for housing subsidies, which meant fewer jobs for people doing the work of case management.”
Remaining funds will be distributed to other services agencies such as Salvation Army Glendale, Door of Hope and the Glendale Housing Authority. In addition, Family Promise of the Verdugos will receive $100,000.
Looking ahead, both Samvelyan and Komuro said that their biggest challenge will be incentivising landlords to open up housing units for people with subsidies such as housing-choice vouchers.
They also hope to continually reach out to the homeless veteran population.
According to a count conducted last January, the homeless population grew by about 15% during 2015, although the figure was mostly attributed to a 130-bed emergency winter shelter run by Ascencia, the largest ever for the organization.
This year, Ascencia was unable to secure a site for a shelter and recommends an emergency site located in Sylmar, operated by Hope of the Valley Rescue Mission. A pick-up spot is located in Burbank, but Ascencia will not be providing routine transportation to the Sylmar location.
In circumstances of extreme vulnerability, Ascencia may provide transportation or help some clients with bus tokens, according to KOmuro.
Although the end of the Obama administration means a change in HUD’s leadership — with president-elect Donald Trump recently tapping retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson as secretary — Komuro said the needs of homeless programs are well understood by most elected officials.
“What I think most members of Congress understand is that the homeless programs that come through HUD are very cost effective,” Komuro said. “They leverage considerable private sources of funding, and we are extremely accountable for this money.”
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Jeff Landa, jeff.landa@latimes.com
Twitter: @JeffLanda
