Rental subsidies for L.A. homeless vets often unused

Bureaucracy has left more than 4,000 vouchers for housing gathering dust.

- BY DOUG SMITH

WEINGART was forced to convert 10 of 40 veteran units in its high-rise residential tower in the Skid Row area to non-veteran vouchers.

Over the last decade, Los Angeles County housing authorities have received nearly 4,500 rental vouchers to get homeless veterans into permanent housing.

If all of those vouchers had been put to use, veteran homelessness would be a thing of the past.

"There are certainly enough available vouchers to eliminate veteran homelessness in Los Angeles County," said Emilio Salas, executive director of the county housing authority.

Instead, chronic failures in a complicated system of referral, leasing and support services have left those housing authorities treading water. About 4,000 vouchers are gathering dust while an estimated 3,400 veterans remain on the county’s streets or in its shelters.

The county’s 11 housing agencies that receive vouchers through the federal HUD-VASH program have obtained leases for only 59% of them, a rate 20 percentage points below the national average.

Salas and other housing authority officials say they could do much better if the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs would send them more applicants. In a segmented system, the housing authorities manage the leasing but the VA is responsible for identifying qualified veterans and helping them find a home.

"Getting them through that process to me to issue the voucher is where the problem lies," Salas said.

The chief executive of L.A. city's housing authority, Lourdes Castro Ramirez, said the agency would need 25 referrals a week, three times what it has historically received, to use its vouchers effectively.