HUD to Pay Rent for 1,898 Homeless Families : Housing: L.A. wins a $66-million grant. Private agencies will identify those with the best chance of making the transition off the streets.

The Los Angeles Housing Authority has won a $66-million federal grant to work with local nonprofit homeless agencies in a unique program to get nearly 2,000 homeless families off the streets and into permanent housing.

Under the program, announced Friday, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development will provide rent subsidies for 1,898 low-income housing units--in an expansion of the federal government’s Section 8 program.

The city will work with 11 private homeless agencies that will identify families with the best chances of making the transition from the street. The federal money will help pay the rent, and the local agencies will provide the support services the families need to stay in the housing permanently, officials said.

“This could serve as a national model,” said Ruth Schwartz, director of the Shelter Partnership, which helped design the program.

With the subsidy, families in the program would spend just 30% of their income for housing, instead of the 70% to 80% that it would normally cost them.

“In the past, the Housing Authority gave preference to homeless applicants but was unable to provide services other than offering rental assistance,” said Mayor Tom Bradley in announcing the award.

“By working with other agencies, we will be able to provide comprehensive support to the homeless families who apply for the program,” the mayor said. “This will greatly increase the chances that the families will successfully find permanent housing.”

The city already manages 23,000 housing units in HUD’s Section 8 program and has a backlog of 82,000 applications for rent subsidies.

But this latest award is “a critical piece of the city’s homeless program,” said Parker Anderson, general manager of the city’s Community Development Department.

The city, he said, already provides emergency shelter with its cold-weather program and tries to match the homeless with available social services through its mobile ombudsman program.

Anderson said the housing subsidy program “is the crux of what this is all about: To transition the homeless into permanent housing.”

The program is set to begin in December and operate for five years.

The agencies that will help select families are the Watts Labor Community Action Committee; AIDS Project Los Angeles; Better Valley Services; Beyond Shelter; the Chicana Service Action Center; Harbor Interfaith; Hollywood Family Assistance; Para Los Ninos; St. Joseph Center; the Mobile Home Transitional Housing Program and the Weingart Center.