Benjamin Oreskes LA TIMES- December 22, 2021 Originally posted in the LATimes

Yesterday 2:19 PM

Earlier this month, Los Angeles city officials tried something new in their pursuit of pairing homeless people with rental subsidies.

They brought a group of homeless people the paperwork and the resources necessary to get these complicated applications completed.

The lobby and pool area of the Mayfair hotel — whose rooms have been rented to unhoused people through California’s Project Roomkey program — became a pop-up center for people to apply for nearly 7,000 Emergency Housing Vouchers that have been made available to people in Los Angeles County through the federal stimulus package, which was passed earlier this year.

City and county officials are in a bit of a race against time. Throughout the pandemic, Los Angeles has rented thousands of hotel rooms for homeless people to protect them from the virus. These rooms have been a landing spot as the city conducts outreach in an effort to help people and clear large encampments, such as those in Echo Park Lake and Venice Beach.

Nearly 1,400 rooms are still rented, and while plans could still change, they will begin to close in the New Year. So pairing these vouchers with people has newfound urgency.

Of the nearly 7,000 vouchers awarded to public housing authorities in the county, very few so far have resulted in leases for people who are either homeless or at risk of becoming homeless. Nationally, a similar phenomenon is occurring with the 70,000 vouchers that were created in the American Rescue Plan.

Keep Reading https://www.latimes.com/homeless-housing/story/2021-12-22/a-race-to-distribute-vouchers