‘Gimme Shelter’: Why L.A. struggles to provide emergency housing

Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, federal housing officials have developed a new program in hopes of getting homeless residents off the streets more quickly. The coupon expense, which pays the lion’s share of a tenant’s rent, would be easy for tenants to use and would offer generous incentives to landlords. In some cases, landlords and property managers could earn $7,000 in bonuses just for allowing one of those new coupon holders to live in their unit.

In this episode of Gimme Shelter: The California Housing Crisis Podcast, we discuss why Los Angeles is struggling to accommodate people under this program, despite the eased restrictions and great need for homeless shelters. LA had only used about 6% of the more than 3,000 coupons it had received as of last month. Our guest is Jack Lahey, director of homeless services at San Luis Obispo County’s Community Action Partnership, which has had much more success than LA with the voucher program

“Gimme Shelter,” a bi-weekly podcast exploring why living in California is so expensive and what the state can do about it, features Liam Dillon, reporting on housing affordability issues for the Los Angeles Times, and Manuela Tobías, Reporter for Housing CalMatters.

You can subscribe to Gimme Shelter on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, Soundcloud and Google Podcasts.