Mixed Results For Project 50

(image from Getty Images)

by Richard Guzman
LA Downtown News

It was about one year ago that Zev Yaroslavsky and Gloria Molina brought an ambitious proposal before their fellow County Supervisors: to identify and house Skid Row's 50 most vulnerable people - those who had been there the longest, the ones who were sickest and most disenfranchised, those who had the least hope and the greatest chance of dying. The effort, the supervisors hoped, would encourage others to follow suit and get off the streets.

A year later, the results are mixed, and while several dozen people have left the streets and begun the road to recovery, some observers question the program's effectiveness and its cost.

In the effort to house the desired number of people, Project 50 staff ultimately targeted 140 homeless. Even though 50 individuals were supposed to be in housing within six months, the $5.6 million program is currently housing 41 individuals.

Longtime Skid Row officials have expressed cautious optimism about Project 50's long-term potential.

"I like to see it analyzed, given time, to see if it works. Can they get 50 people in and can they stay there?" asked Herb Smith, president of the Los Angeles Mission, who criticized some aspects of the project when the funding was approved.

"It's a great theory," added Orlando Ward, director of public affairs for the Midnight Mission. "It's had some hiccups and some faulty implementation, but the county needs to stay the course and continue to recognize its responsibility in helping these most vulnerable citizens."

Project 50 was unanimously approved by the supervisors on Nov. 20, 2007, and in January they allocated $5.6 million to fund the three-year program. It was modeled after a project by New York-based Common Ground, a nonprofit organization that in 2003 had success with a similar program focusing on helping homeless people around Times Square.

At the beginning of the project, officials with Common Ground, which won the contract to run the program, along with a team of people from county and city homeless agencies, began fanning out across 40 blocks of Skid Row. They spoke with 471 people sleeping on sidewalks, in tents and under cardboard or blankets.

From that batch, they interviewed 350 people. Those individuals were then given a "vulnerability score" determined by factors such as length of homelessness and physical and mental health status.

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