L.A. County voters approved a measure that significantly increased funding for homeless services. To support the expansion of these services, the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services and the Office of Diversion and Reentry hired FUSE executive fellow Thelá Thatch to develop a plan to recruit, hire, and retain additional staff.
To determine the scale of personnel needs and recruitment strategies that needed to support the community-based organizations contracted by the county, Thelá created a forecasting tool that found that more than 2,000 new hires would be needed across city agencies and community partners in 2018 to support the county’s homelessness efforts. A core part of Thelá’s plan to recruit a diverse and multifaceted recruitment pipeline. Thelá convened local community-based organizations to identify new ways of connecting people with lived experience, such as homelessness or incarceration, to job opportunities within those organizations. These efforts are preparing L.A. County for a dramatic expansion of services for people experiencing homelessness.
