News to Know for March 2025

Council District 13 released their first community spotlight reel on March 18th, featuring Hollywood 4WRD's Executive Director Brittney Weissman. In the reel shared on Instagram and YouTube, Brittney turns the spotlight back on our community -- a cross-section of residents, business leaders and folks with lived experience, as well as providers, City/County partners and Faith-based organizations -- all of whom are working together to end and prevent street homelessness in Greater Hollywood.

Are you concerned, frustrated, sad or angry about homelessness in Hollywood? Consider joining our coalition and helping point us towards solutions that will make a difference for us all.

The news to know this month offers a range of homelessness-related content from the last 30 days, including an overview of a current 'Community Scan' being conducted by UCLA and Serve LA (shared at H4WRD's member meeting on 3/18), as well as LAHSA's just-released pre-release of their Homeless Count data.

• H4WRD Member Meeting, 3/18: Integrating Care for People Experiencing Homelessness in Hollywood
  • Olivia Jung (UCLA) teamed up with Serve LA's Kyle Mueller to offer H4WRD members an early look at their research on the types of care being offered to people experiencing homelessness in our community. Two goals of the study are to:
    • Map community resources and organizations in Hollywood to understand the area’s support ecosystem;
    • Explore the barriers and facilitators to integrating care for people experiencing homelessness, according to their own perspectives and the providers who care for them.
  • For anyone interested in participating in the UCLA/Serve LA 'Community Scan' project, please contact Olivia HERE and/or Kyle HERE!
• LA Daily News, 3/20: City of LA aims to create homeless oversight bureau to keep any eye on the money
  • Amid growing concerns over transparency and homelessness spending, the Los Angeles City Council has authorized the formation of a new bureau to ensure taxpayer funds are resulting in the appropriate outcomes. Council members voted 13-0 to instruct departments to report within 30 days on the resources needed to establish the bureau and identify potential funding sources. Councilwoman Nithya Raman, chair of the council’s Housing and Homelessness Committee, introduced the motion on Feb. 26 alongside her colleagues Bob Blumenfield and Katy Yaroslavsky.
• LA Times, 3/20: Unsheltered homelessness projected to be down over much of L.A. County
  • Unsheltered homelessness declined for a second consecutive year across most of Los Angeles County last year, homeless officials reported Wednesday. Buoyed by a positive trend in the annual homeless count, the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority released a preview projecting a decline of between 5% and 10% when a full statistical analysis is completed in the coming months. The rough count, based on observations by thousands of volunteers who canvassed the county’s streets last month, showed 900 fewer people seen on the street and 2,700 fewer vehicles and dwellings.
• LA Daily News, 3/19: Supervisors push to shift homeless funding from LAHSA to new LA County department
  • The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors will vote April 1 on whether to shift hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars from the much-maligned L.A. Homeless Services Authority to a new county department promising greater accountability. The motion by Supervisors Lindsey Horvath and Kathryn Barger says the county would reallocate most of the $350 million sent to LAHSA annually to a “transparent, efficient system overseen by one entity, directly responsible to the Board of Supervisors and held accountable to clearly defined performance-based outcomes.”
• LA County Department of Public Health, 3/6: New Public Health Report Shows Homeless Mortality Rate Plateaued for Second Consecutive Year in 2023
  • The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health released its sixth annual report on mortality among people experiencing homelessness in Los Angeles County. In 2023, the most recent year of data available for the report, there were 2,508 deaths among people experiencing homelessness. While the mortality rate remained high, at 3,326 deaths per 100,000 people, 2023 (the most recent year of data available for the report) marked the second consecutive year of a plateau in the homeless mortality rate, which previously saw a devastating increase of 56% from 2019 to 2021. 
    • Read the report HERE
    • Read DPH's Press Release HERE
• MindSite News, 2/28: How a Mental Health Community Saved Lives in LA Fire
  • An article documenting the efforts of the staff and members of Fountain House's Hollywood Clubhouse -- an essential component of the Hollywood 2.0 program (see H20pen House invite below!) -- to ensure all of its 51 members remained safe throughout the harrowing LA wildfires in January. Clubhouse Director Jillian Santoro credits many of the “sister clubhouses” across the country for playing a key role at this vital time by checking in with each of the 51 members on a daily basis. “This level of commitment underscored the strength of our community and the unwavering support we have for one another.”

Hollywood 4WRD offers "News to Know" in an effort to expand our community's awareness about the complicated issues surrounding homelessness. We share them first through these weekly newsletters, but you can find them anytime in the GREAT READS section of our website.

‍Enjoyed any good books, articles or podcasts lately? Please contact us if you have a 'great read' recommendation to add to our growing collection.