The 2019 Report and Recommendations of The Ad Hoc Committee on Black People Experiencing Homelessness (1) detailed the necessary actions to advance equity and eliminate racial disparities impacting Black people experiencing homelessness across Los Angeles County. Included in the report was a call to action for Los Angeles Homeless Service Authority (LAHSA) to thoughtfully examine the drivers of inequitable outcomes (including practices and policies) within the homeless system and to set a course as an agency in advancing racial equity.
Since the launch of the Ad Hoc Committee and the release of the initial report, Los Angeles City and Los Angeles County have both continued to see an increase of people experiencing homelessness as reported in the 2020 Point in Time count. The annual point in time count of sheltered and unsheltered people experiencing homelessnes reported a 13% increase in the County of Los Angeles and a 16% increase in the City of Los Angeles. (2)
The Ad Hoc Committee report aimed to address the staggering overrepresentation of Black people experiencing homelessness; an alarming statistic that seemed to worsen since the release of the report. The 2020 Greater Los Angeles Homeless Count (3) reported that although Black people only accounted for 8% of LA’ county’s population, Black people represented 34% of those experiencing homelessness.
The impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and the social justice uprisings of the summer have created an even louder call to action for LAHSA to re-examine its role in advancing racial and housing justice as a system leader.
It is against this backdrop that LAHSA first engaged with the National Innovation Service (NIS) in late-summer of 2020 to develop an Equity Action Plan that reflected the actions needed to become a justice based and equitable homeless system administrator.
NIS first conducted an organizational audit. We systematically engaged LAHSA staff in order to understand their experiences, needs, and priorities related to racial equity; better understand the breadth and depth of the infusion of racial equity into policies and practices within LAHSA and across the homeless response system in Los Angeles; and identify further opportunities for antiracist practice and policy.
The audit also involved reviewing internal and external policies and documents related to racial equity, reviewing existing quantitative and qualitative data with racial and economic indicators, and conducting participatory research through an agency wide survey, in-depth interviews and co-design sessions with targeted groups of staff. During this process, NIS worked closely with frontline agency staff, agency leadership, and key stakeholders. NIS conducted the process this way in order to understand the formal and informal policies and practices of the agency; the needs, experiences, and priorities of different groups with respect to racial justice, the challenges in implementing effective antiracist practice within the agency and the system more broadly; and the opportunities that people with lived experience of LAHSA’s services identified for system(s) transformation. NIS’s approach and methods are detailed below.
To understand what it means to advance racial justice and antiracist practices requires an understanding of the origin of policies and practices that already exist in those spaces. Black, Indegenious and people of color (BIPOC) have historically experienced housing instability and homelessness at significantly greater rates than their white counterparts. This disproportionality is the result of systemic racism and histories of white supremacist policy enacted to deprive BIPOC communities of access to resources and wealth building mechanisms–including home ownership. (4) While experiencing homelessness, (in addition to the trauma suffered through the experience of homelessness) institutional and systemic racism from within the homeless response system, especially its services, results in harmful and negative outcomes. (5)
In A Brief Timeline of Race and Homelessness in America, (6) NIS and partners describe the historical connections between race and homelessness in the United States; including a timeline that illuminates the origin of policies and practices that drive homeless response systems today. An antiracist system must be able to really see and translate the historical and present day racist trauma into policy, practice, and action that both redresses that previous harm and moves towards a new reality. This approach is at the center of the audit and planning process that NIS is leveraging with LAHSA.
NIS worked closely with the LAHSA Racial Equity Leadership Workgroup to implement an approach to better understand the organization’s experiences, needs, and priorities and identify key areas of intervention in order to further and deepen the agency’s racial equity work through driving system-level change.
There were four distinct parts to our jointly planned process and overlapping data collection: an audit of written policy and practices (materials audit), organizational listening sessions and survey, lived experience leadership and engagement assessment, and leadership and staff support and coaching.
The objectives of this process were the following:
- Create space for organizational staff and leadership to have confidential conversations to feel fully self-expressed in sharing concerns and needs.
- Assess core organizational needs around diversity, equity, and inclusion by evaluating organizational policies, practices, strategic plans, data, and related documentation.
- Understand the experiences of people who are served by the homeless system in Los Angeles, to highlight areas where inequities and bias may appear in current approaches to lived-experience engagements and housing services.
- Identify opportunities for equitable decision-making within LAHSA and amongst city and county partners.
- Provide a new Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Director with tools, resources and relationship power to deliver on racial equity actions.
Materials Audit
NIS identified, collected, and reviewed programmatic data, organizational, departmental, and office strategic plans, process documents, and other service delivery materials and tools to support the development of the staff and leadership focus groups and interviews. Additionally, NIS assessed for evidence of racial equity tools and concepts to inform decision-making processes, program design and evaluation and organizational practices. NIS’s organizational audit was also used to help inform opportunities for interviews to dive deeper into content (i.e. human resource management) and where to target areas of support for subsequent leadership coaching.
Survey and Organizational Co-design Sessions
LAHSA Agency-Wide Survey: NIS conducted a survey open to all LAHSA staff to gain deeper understanding of the current level of organizational literacy related to key equity concepts organizational activities around anti-racism, diversity, equity, and inclusion; LAHSA staff’s views of organizational strengths and areas for improvement with regard to racial equity; and gain staff input about what types of racial equity actions should be prioritized for LAHSA going forward.
An invitation to complete the survey was sent to all current LAHSA employees with a LAHSA determined goal of achieving 100% participation and 60-70% representation from the 13 departments. The survey was open for responses between November 16-25, 2020.
The survey was completed by 187 LAHSA employees reflective of a diverse representation of all departments and various staff positions and length of time employed at LAHSA. Highest levels of survey participation were in the Access and Engagement, Policy and Systems, and Executive Management departments.
Upon closing, the results were shared as part of a high-level theme report-out to the Directors Team at the end of November. The themes identified informed iteration to the materials audit and preparation for the co-design sessions.
In Depth Interviews
NIS conducted 11 in-depth interviews based on sampling criteria prioritized by the Directors team. Staff who were invited to participate in interviews and focus groups were randomly selected from a sample set created by using a stratified random sampling method, based on organizational department, race and ethnicity. The sample set was then reviewed to ensure identified criteria were met (criteria included: representation of various positions, representation from varied tenure at LAHSA, and an overrepresentation of members from the Access and Engagement department given their overrepresentation in the the percentage makeup of the organization).
NIS also conducted several listening sessions with different cohorts of staff to gain perspective and proposed solutions in response to the audit findings during the discovery and diagnosis phase.
Lived Experience Board Engagement and Relationship to LAHSA
In addition to reviewing available materials regarding LEAH governance structure, activities, compensation and LAHSA’s coordination support, NIS also met with the Lived Experience Advisory Board (LEAB) at three different times during our process to introduce the effort, solicit feedback and to review and discuss our audit findings. NIS also conducted in-depth interviews with five LEAB board members.
Leadership and Staff Support and Coaching
Over the course of our engagement, the NIS team has coordinated routinely with LAHSA leadership in order to support its continued ability to shepherd the advancement of racial equity work. The NIS team has conducted bi-weekly touch base calls in order to steer the work forward. The NIS team has used this time as a potential resource with regard to other governance design questions that are currently being undertaken. The NIS team also supported the LAHSA leadership through the hiring process for the Director of Equity position during these meetings.
NIS was not able to go as deep in the quantitative analysis as originally planned. Given the limitations of the organizational materials received, NIS was able to take a cursory review of general processes related to strategic planning, service programming, continuous quality improvement and policy planning.
In addition, given limited time and capacity, NIS focused its assessment of lived experience leadership and engagement based on the current relationship with the LEAB board and board members and was not able to speak to all groups of people who are engaged with LAHSA. The NIS team was not able to include in the audit any additional materials or interviews with stakeholders who represent the intersection of LAHSA’s organizational services and other parts of the homeless response system.
Lastly, given the size of the organization, NIS was not able to engage every staff member through the combination of the agency-wide survey, the in-depth interviews and the targeted groups jointly determined for the co-design sessions. NIS is confident that the voices of LAHSA staff were heard through the completed activities; there was significant representation across the organization even though the team was not able to speak to every current employee at LAHSA.
As LAHSA transitions to setting up an implementation structure and process for advancing racial justice; NIS recommends that LAHSA builds on what was learned through this process to identify areas of intersection and exploration with staff, contracted providers, current clients and other stakeholders engaged in the Los Angeles homeless response system.
Current LAHSA Qualitative Data
Policy audit and analysis + collaborative data review:
- Organizational Staffing, Performance Management and Professional Development
- Environmental Policy
- Organizational Design and Governance
- Homeless Services Programmatic Materials
- Racial Equity Specific Materials
- Programs and processes focused on equity
- Current and pending policies and guidance focused on equity
New Quantitative Data
All Agency Survey:
- Disseminated survey to all LAHSA staff. Completed by 187 individual staff
New Qualitative Data
Participatory research:
- Presentations, feedback sessions, and planning meetings:
- Racial Equity Management Workgroup bi- weekly meetings
- LAHSA Directors and Associate Directors Meetings
- LAHSA Managers and Supervisors Meeting
- GARE committee
- Clutch Consulting Strategic Planning and Reorg Meeting
- LEAB Board Meetings
- In depth interviews with 17 people
- Co-designs sessions with
- Lived Experience Advisory Board
- Directors/Associate Directors
- Access and Engagement Team
- GARE committee
- Managers and Supervisors