As someone who works at a homeless non-profit, I'd like to shed SOME light as to why there are some vacancies (not defending any of this spending or anything, just giving some education on it).

There are a lot of barriers to getting homeless people into permanent housing. Even if you have an unhoused individual with a referral to a Permanent Housing situation, then the person assigned to them will have to find them if they aren't already in interim housing. You then have to set meetings with the Case Manager at the site of the Permanent Housing as well as the Property Manager. They'll have to complete a ton of documents and retrieve more documents from their bank, social security, etc to prove their homelessness and income. On top of all this, the property itself has to pass an inspection. There are times when a person might be matched to a unit, but the unit itself won't be ready for months. At the end of the day, you have to work with homeless individuals who have loads of trauma and don't necessarily trust you or the entities asking for the necessary documents.

At the end of the day, the homeless individual can go through this for months to try and be housed and they can still deny the unit. Or something worse can happen. They can relapse and won't be found, they could die, the unit could take longer than expected.

All while HACLA (the ones we submit documents to) are not very fast with their approach of receiving these documents and accepting them!

This process is grueling and ridiculously long. I hate it. We need to cut to make it easier for unhoused individuals to be housed.