City Hall’s mid-year report on West Hollywood’s robust slate of social services, as demonstrated in these examples, reveals a very mixed bag of successes and failures from the legion of outside organizations under contract with the city.
The Friends Research Institute, which runs an outpatient substance abuse treatment program, enrolled only four participants under the West Hollywood-funded portion of the contract in the second quarter, bringing the program to just 56% of its annual enrollment objective. Despite the low numbers, three homeless participants received assistance with shelter, one of whom was connected to an LGBT supportive sober living home.
The city’s “Active Contracts” web portal describes two current Friends Research Institute agreements, one listed as “Social Services 2022-2023 grant for HIV AIDS education through street outreach” and the other as “Social Services grant 2022-2023 for substance abuse treatment.” The organization receives $358,414 for both contracts.
Healthcare in Action’s Mobile Street Medicine Crisis Response program reported some successes despite falling short of its goals for triage calls and enrollment of unique unhoused residents. The program administered urgent treatments to 42 community members in crisis, achieving 84% of its goal. It exceeded its goal for urgent transfers to a medical facility by 200%, and its goal for transitions of assessed patients to a primary care clinician by 175%. Their share of city funding is $556,193.
Similarly, the Alliance for Housing and Healing, which provides an Aging in Place COVID-19 Emergency Subsidy, assisted only 12 qualifying West Hollywood seniors during the second quarter. The program has since paused its rental assistance program, despite being allocated $50,000 for the program year. Their contract is for $198,939.00.
Jewish Family Service of Los Angeles, which runs the SOVA Community Food and Resource Program, provided groceries to 36 new unduplicated West Hollywood community members and 376 community members year-to-date during 2,638 pantry visits. However, the program fell short of its quarterly goal of 148 new unduplicated clients, achieving only 24% of that goal. The program did exceed its goal for new and ongoing clients by 12%, and its goal for pantry visits by 11%. JFS’s three contracts total $1,822,231 in city funding.
Extremely grateful that the City funds and contracts with these much needed services.
Yet another cut and paste ^article* by Brandon. I still have yet to see Brandon or Larry at a Human Services Commission meeting. It’s great being s backseat driver, huh? Hopefully yhis will be posted as many of my comments are “lost”.
Please write us an opinion piece on the merits of WeHo’s social services! Your perspective is unique and valuable. We’d love to publish it
People who might be interested in taking advantage of these services but may not be aware of them.
Jewish Family Service has a long history in West Hollywood and has always been a tremendous asset to our community and its well being. Thank you!