Hilton Foundation Funded Initiative Produces Results
The Urban Institute has just completed its fourth report as part of the evaluation of the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation Initiative to End Homelessness for People with Mental Illness in Los Angeles.

In October 2004, the Corporation for Supportive Housing (CSH) received a five-year grant and a Program Related Investment from The Conrad N. Hilton Foundation to launch an initiative in Los Angeles County to
reduce the number of long-term homeless people, with a special focus on ending homelessness among people with serious mental illness. To promote these outcomes, CSH is using grant and loan money to fund
predevelopment work on various permanent supportive housing (PSH) projects, collaborating with public officials and other key stakeholders in the county and selected cities to stimulate increased commitment to
PSH, supporting the Special Needs Housing Alliance, and interacting in other ways with City and County of Los Angeles officials and agencies. This work builds on an earlier CSH project, Taking Health Care Home
(THCH), funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, through which CSH initiated many of the activities that are now expanding through Hilton Foundation support. CSH contracted with the Urban Institute to help evaluate this initiative. This, the fourth evaluation report, extends the focus on system change. It documents the quite impressive developments that have occurred since early 2007 and the groundwork CSH and its partners have laid for even more effective actions to end long-term homelessness. It also examines how far there is to go.

Evaluators found that (1) the pipeline of new supportive housing units is expanding; (2) early developments in improving health care for homeless people have matured; (3) pilot projects are underway to address the housing and service needs of people leaving jail and prison; (4) new approaches to serving the most vulnerable are gaining momentum; and (5) new cross-system collaborating/coordinating structures have developed to address long-term homelessness.

Widening Effects of the Corporation for Supportive Housing's System-Change Efforts in Los Angeles, 2005-2008