Area of Expertise: Engaging People with Lived Experience

The Los Angeles Tenant Centered Collaboratory (Co-LAB) is an extension of CSH’s capacity-building efforts in the Western United States to improve the operations and fidelity to the core principles of quality supportive housing. The goal of the Co-LAB, supported by the Hilton Foundation, is to improve the quality of tenant-centered and high-quality supportive housing to focus our training and technical assistance (TA) on tenant outcomes, and to do so with the guidance of tenant leadership.

Background

In May 2021, the Corporation for Supportive Housing (CSH) launched The Los Angeles Tenant-Centered Co-LAB (Co-LAB) Training series. The training was designed as a collaborative, peer-to-peer learning environment for teams comprised of people with lived experience, housing developers/owners, services providers, and property manager partners that are within 1-3 years of leasing up their Los Angeles County supportive housing developments. Additionally, the purpose of the Co-LAB was to foster the co-creation of community environments centered on tenant choice, fairness, safety, and wellness. The Co-LAB also focused on navigating operational challenges common in the first year while ensuring tenant retention, promoting tenant leadership, and sustaining staff for long-term success.

Following the participation of the Co-LAB, participants were offered follow-up Technical Assistance (TA) for up to 18 months (TA provided at 6 months, 12 months, and 18 months). Technical assistance that was offered included:  best practices on the coordination between supportive services and property management for quick lease-ups during the COVID-19 pandemic, assistance with understanding the developments pro-forma, budgeting for the lease-up process, and developing trauma-informed training for property managers.

Focus Groups

In 2023-2024, the Co-LAB hosted eight (8) Focus Groups that included representation from Los Angeles supportive housing developers, service providers, tenants, individuals with lived expertise of homelessness and working in homeless services, and property managers. The purpose of the Focus Groups was to 1) understand the perspectives and learning needs of each group, 2) to inform the Co-LAB curriculum development and 3) to guide how to support pressing training and technical assistance needs.

Below is a summary of each focus group type. The summary includes information about the focus group format, participants, and considerations for expanding access to quality supportive housing in Los Angeles County.

Meaningful changes to decrease the impact of the child welfare system on families must be led by the people most impacted by these systems. CSH hired a part-time Keeping Families Together (KFT) Fellow to work with CSH staff in a one-year project to co-design CSH strategy and approach to engaging parents highly impacted by child welfare and housing instability. The KFT co-design team approached their work in a relational way, co-creating every aspect of the work: from team meeting structure to determining final deliverables.

Below is a summary of major themes and recommendations from interviews and other experiments implemented by the KFT co-design team.

In the summer and fall of 2022, CSH and Casey Family Programs hosted a virtual talking circle and a series of subsequent conversations with Native American leaders, service providers and families from across the United States that work in the fields of child welfare, Indian Child Welfare Act and supportive housing. These conversations were led by Patty Beech Consulting, and focused on how to better connect quality, affordable housing and supportive services to Native American families who are at-risk of being separated or who have child welfare system involvement and are facing homelessness or housing instability.