Dozens of framed photographs and paintings on the walls in Gabrielle’s cozy one-bedroom apartment in Boyle Heights showcase her artistry and cherished memories from trips to New Zealand and Europe. Her favorite is a black and white portrait of a miner in New Zealand panning for gold. 

Gabrielle (who is comfortable printing only her first name) feels she struck gold, too, when she moved into this light-filled apartment in September 2019. She calls the place — with an open kitchen, a large bathroom and a sweeping view over park greenery and palm trees to the snow-capped mountains outside of Los Angeles — her “safe haven,” after feeling unsafe for several years. 

A professional gemologist whose family once had five jewelry stores in Hawaii, she had struggled with alcoholism and mental health issues, and a suicide attempt left her in a coma for five days. While she was recovering from major neck surgery and fighting to be granted disability, she was living in her car in Los Angeles for several months and in transitional housing for more than 15 months. She wondered if she would ever have an apartment again or “be stuck in a hell hole forever.”

A 2020 report found that Los Angeles had more than one vacant residential unit for every unhoused person. Credit: Ocean Image Photography / Shutterstock

Gabrielle’s luck began to change when a California nonprofit called Brilliant Corners got involved. She had qualified for help from the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services Housing for Health division that gives priority to vulnerable clients with health issues. (Gabrielle contributes 30 percent of her income to the rent, and the rest is covered by the program’s subsidy.) But when the Boyle Heights apartment in a former hospital opened up, the landlord didn’t want to rent to her because of her bad credit. The real estate specialists at Brilliant Corners worked with Gabrielle’s case manager at the local nonprofit Life Steps to convince the landlord he was not taking a big risk in accepting Gabrielle as a renter. 

Brilliant Corners was founded in 2004 by several nonprofit service providers with the mission to find housing for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities in three California counties. In 2014, it significantly expanded its mission to extremely low-income Californians and began operating the Flexible Housing Subsidy Pool, in partnership with the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services and private partners such as the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation, as part of the Housing for Health initiative. The Flex Pool is a supportive housing rent subsidy program that helps match vulnerable individuals with available housing options. 

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The key is its flexibility: “For one landlord, it was a dealbreaker that the applicant had $3,000 in debt. So we paid off half the debt,” says Kolby Vaughn, Brilliant Corners’ associate housing services director in San Diego, which has a Flex Pool that is funded by the Regional Task Force on Homelessness. “For another client, cooking was really important so we spoke with the landlord [to see] if we could put a hot plate in his unit. These are the kind of hurdles we can overcome outside of the bureaucratic process.”

With a budget of over $200 million, braiding state, local and private funding sources, Brilliant Corners has been able to make a significant impact. “We have developed the capacity to administer over $10 million of rent subsidies every month,” according to Brilliant Corners CEO Bill Pickel. To date, the nonprofit has placed nearly 13,000 unhoused people into permanent homes in Los Angeles, averaging about 200 people a month. Brilliant Corners contracts with government agencies, such as the L.A. County Department of Health Services or Veterans Affairs, other nonprofits and community partners, and pairs up with Intensive Case Management Services to help clients achieve and maintain health and housing stability. 

Its initial efforts in L.A. focused on the most vulnerable clients who frequently used costly emergency services. This is how Brilliant Corners makes the case that it actually saves the county money. According to a 2017 Rand study that analyzed the first two and a half years of the program, every $1 invested in the program saved the county $1.20 in health care and other social service costs. The idea is that once clients have stable housing, they have a better foundation to address other issues including their physical and mental health. 

Brilliant Corners housing coordinator Adriana Flores helped Brian Wearren get over housing hurdles. Credit: Morgan Soloski

“Clients are typically referred by a government agency or a local case management nonprofit,” Pickel explains, as was the case with Life Steps, the local nonprofit that helped Gabrielle. “We meet individuals one on one.” BC’s housing coordinators provide support from the initial contact all the way through. “They are sticking with one person and don’t leave them alone once they are in an apartment,” says Pickel. “Most folks need some level of ongoing support.”

NPR calls Brilliant Corners a “real estate agency for the unhoused,” because what distinguishes it from other housing programs is its dedicated team of landlord engagement specialists who build long-standing relationships with landlords so they know when a unit will become available. This strategy is considerably different from the normal bureaucratic process where overworked case managers need to find the time to canvas neighborhoods and rental portals for available apartments. 

“Especially in California communities where the real estate market is so intense and vacancies are so limited, landlords have lots of choices and might go with someone who just landed a job at Google or Facebook,” Pickel notes. “How can low-income folks possibly compete in such a competitive market to secure a unit? We help put everything in place to match somebody with the unit.” Brilliant Corners sometimes enters into long-term agreements with landlords; these could include guaranteeing rent from day one even before the tenant moves in and assurances that rent is paid on time. 

Manola Rodriguez, for instance, who owns and manages 50 apartment units in Antelope Valley with her husband, met Brilliant Corners representatives when they were canvassing the neighborhood in 2014. She has been renting half of her units to Brilliant Corners clients ever since. “We believe in second chances,” she says. “It’s very hard for people to function without a roof over their head.” 

Despite its convincing model, Brilliant Corners has dozens of one-star reviews on online platforms where both clients and landlords complain that they have been unable to reach anybody at the nonprofit when problems arose, such as a rodent infestation or behavioral issues with mentally ill renters. But Rodriguez says that Brilliant Corners representatives were always there to assist with problems.

Brilliant Corners client Brian Wearren enjoys his apartment building’s rooftop. Courtesy of Brilliant Corners

To cut through even more red tape and avoid cumbersome bureaucracy, Brilliant Corners is currently developing five multifamily housing sites in L.A., totaling 376 units of permanent supportive housing. The nonprofit is also managing its own residential care homes. 

The situation is particularly dire in Los Angeles County, which counted more than 75,500 unhoused people in 2023, an uptick of nine percent from 2022. The homeless number in the city has gone up 10 percent to 46,260, and more than 2,000 unhoused people died last year in the city amidst the housing and fentanyl crises, more than six deaths a day. The alarming death rate, too, rises significantly every year. 

A Harvard study shows that low-rent units under $1,400 a month have disappeared fast across all states, particularly in California. “We’re rehousing people faster and more people. Even though the number of people we are able to house is rising, the number of people who need affordable housing is rising faster,” Pickel admits. “What comes to mind is the unfortunate image of bailing water out of a boat, but there’s more water coming in than we can bail out.”

On her first day in office in December 2022, L.A. Mayor Karen Bass signed an emergency declaration on homelessness, promising to cut red tape and fast-track affordable housing permits. Activists laud her efforts, but they are far from enough. “Billions are being spent. What are we doing wrong?” Pickel asks. “I think we have a multi-generational complex social problem that includes the failure to build enough housing at various income levels, including middle-income housing, workforce housing and deeply affordable housing. We also have a tragically fractured social safety net and an unfolding crisis of people in severe distress, whether it’s from mental health, substance abuse or so many other reasons. It is really hard to develop our way out of this problem. We would need something in the order of $10 to $12 billion a year. That’s a staggering number.”

Similarly, in San Diego, Kolby Vaughn says that more people end up unhoused for the first time than Brilliant Corners and other services can put in apartments. Many seniors are aging into homelessness because their pensions are not keeping up with housing prices. Since launching the San Diego Flex Pool in October 2020, Brilliant Corners has housed 900 individuals and families in need, with a focus on youth, veterans and those with complex health issues. But the need continues to mount: California needs 1.4 million more affordable rental units. 

At the same time, studies also show that a significant percentage of high-rent housing is lying vacant, held for its value not as shelter, but for investment purposes. A 2020 report found that Los Angeles had more than one vacant residential unit for every unhoused person.

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This is where Brilliant Corners sees a lever to offer landlords incentives to rent to their clients by giving them assurances other nonprofits can’t. “We’re not building our way out of homelessness,” Brilliant Corners housing coordinator Adriana Flores says. She has experienced housing insecurity herself. “A lot of us have been in our clients’ shoes,” she says, and she calls what she offers them “a hand up, not a handout.”

Her client Brian Wearren is a success story. After being honorably discharged from the Navy and then having been incarcerated for 25 years for assault and robbery, Wearren faced some hurdles to finding housing: He had no rental history, no credit and no income. But he found himself a one-bedroom apartment in San Diego on the 12th floor with a view over the city. Brilliant Corners helped him pay for application fees and furniture, and Flores assured the landlord the rent was guaranteed with his VA (Veterans Affairs) rent voucher. Now he works two jobs as a plumber and a fiber optics cable installer and wants to pay it forward. 

“I’m extremely lucky and had a lot of support, but not everybody is so lucky,” Wearren says. “I want to establish transitional housing for guys like me who come out of the military or out of incarceration.” 

The post What If Finding Affordable Housing Worked More Like Matchmaking? appeared first on Reasons to be Cheerful.

After struggling with alcohol addiction for over 10 years — during which his 20-year banking career and 30-year marriage both collapsed — it was a presentation in a rehab center in 2019 that became the catalyst for Miles to turn his life around.

The presentation was by Invisible Cities, an organization which, since its inception in 2016, has trained 118 formerly homeless people to become tour guides. It’s a creative way of giving them not only a new income stream, but also a new sense of purpose — and skillset, too. 

“This helped fill a void after I finished rehab,” says Miles, who has withheld his name for privacy reasons. “This was the opportunity that first helped me back on to a path of a ‘normal’ life again, and having a purpose.” 

It took Miles six months to put together his tour of York. Courtesy of Invisible Cities

“I probably wouldn’t be where I am today without the opportunity Invisible Cities gave me. I’ll always be grateful for that.” 

Invisible Cities’ guides specialize in unique topics that reflect their own personal story — such as a city’s LGBTQI history, notable women, protest culture, ties to witchcraft or how crime and punishment has evolved — in the UK cities of Edinburgh, York, Cardiff, Glasgow and Manchester.

Invisible Cities provides training for guides to create these “alternative walking tours,” as well as in public speaking and customer service skills. The organization is then responsible for marketing the tours and taking bookings. Participants pay up to £15 (around $19 US), which is split between the guide and Invisible Cities to support their efforts in recruiting more guides who have experienced homelessness. 

An Invisible Cities guide regales visitors on a tour in Manchester. Courtesy of Invisible Cities

Invisible Cities has also set up a grant program for guides to access funding to do other external courses or start their own business, and offers training in IT and presentation skills to help them gain further employment. 

With the help of sponsors, Invisible Cities also offers free community tours for specific groups. In 2023, 569 people from the Ukrainian community and from underprivileged areas attended free tours.

Miles’ tour of the English city of York, in which he has lived for the past 30 years, took him six months to put together. During that time, he transitioned out of the rehab center and into resettlement housing, where he stayed until he moved into his own apartment in 2021. 

On his tours, Miles focuses on health and wealth in York, in parallel with his own experience in which his health was compromised due to addiction, and both having and losing wealth. He highlights buildings that have brought either health or wealth to the area, such as St. Leonard’s Hospital, which was one of the first hospitals in the UK, built in medieval times.

Courtesy of Invisible Cities

“This helped fill a void after I finished rehab. This was the opportunity that first helped me back on to a path of a ‘normal’ life again, and having a purpose.”
–Miles, Invisible Cities guide

He also spotlights the city’s chocolate making locations, from the Terry’s Chocolate factory, which manufactured the iconic “chocolate orange” that is a tradition to give and eat at Christmas in the UK, to the Rowntree’s site that created the popular Kit Kat chocolate bar.

“What Terry’s did is they brought employment into the city. But they recognised very early that in order to build their company, they had to provide housing for their staff, and they reinvested their original profits back into their workforce, and into building up the factory,” Miles explains. 

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“And the same with Rowntree’s, who provided health benefits and housing to their workforce. But Rowntree’s was then taken over by Nestle, a multinational conglomerate, whose profits and investment go out of the city.” 

Miles’ tours have evolved over the past five years based on social developments in the city and the questions participants ask. For example, his tours have addressed issues such as gang-related drug dealing, and a lack of accessible parking in the city, and he also weaves in his own experience living with addiction.

An Invisible Cities tour in York. Courtesy of Invisible Cities

“I love being able to share the underbelly of our city, because York is very much seen as a vibrant city that’s rich with history and architecture. But I bring in aspects of rough sleeping, addiction and recovery, and I share what’s actually going on when [it’s] relevant, which keeps it alive for me, because it’s ever-changing,” he says.

Through other volunteering Miles has also built relationships with universities in the area, which have made his tour part of the curriculum for social policy students. He’s even had doctors come along who say they’ve gotten more out of it, in terms of understanding the city’s social support structure for homelessness and addiction, than a formal training day, so he is in talks with a number of local clinics to encourage more medical professionals to attend.

Founder Zakia Moulaoui Guery initially came up with the idea to help formerly homeless people gain the confidence to embrace the next chapter of their lives. To spread the concept of Invisible Cities further across the country, Moulaoui Guery has since developed a social franchise model, partnering with existing homeless organizations, which then take on the recruiting and training of guides. 

This is crucial, says Moulaoui Guery, so the operation can continue to expand in a way that stays true to its mission of leveraging tourism to shine a light on issues of social justice and inequality, and help do good with the money visitors bring to iconic UK cities. Invisible Cities Cardiff, for example, is in partnership with The Wallach, the largest homelessness charity in Wales.

Courtesy of Invisible Cities

Invisible Cities guides are trained to give unique tours that weave together the city's history and their own personal story.

“Finding the right partner on the ground is always more important than whether or not that city will work in a touristic way,” says Moulaoui Guery. “I would rather work with a trusted partner, and for it to be a bit harder in terms of visitors, than to go somewhere like London, for example, which would be a lot harder to make work.” 

In this way, expansion to Liverpool and the Scottish Borders is currently in the works. Moulaoui Guery is also eyeing cities like Oxford, Cambridge, Aberdeen and Dundee.

Not all who take on Invisible Cities’ training become guides — just 16 are currently actively running tours. About a quarter of a training cohort of around eight people become guides, shares Moulaoui Guery, while another quarter stay involved with Invisible Cities in a different capacity, for example, helping at tourism trade shows. Another quarter take up a different opportunity, through a job or setting up their own venture. And another quarter move on without staying in touch.

Zakia Moulaoui Guery, founder of Invisible Cities. Courtesy of Invisible Cities

As much as she’s passionate about spreading the Invisible Cities movement, Moulaoui Guery is just as happy when guides move on.

“I think sometimes it’s great when we don’t hear anything from people, because it means they are moving on, and are too busy living out their dreams. What we don’t want to do is hold onto people forever,” she says. 

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Miles, meanwhile, is not only sober and in his own apartment, but has also helped set up another nonprofit organization to tackle homelessness and poverty. In light of his new commitments, he has gone from doing several Invisible Cities tours a week to a handful a month — but is keen to stay active as a guide even in this capacity.

“I don’t want to stop doing the tours,” he says. “They are really enjoyable. I will still keep this as a precious thing, because we are a close-knit team and really support each other. There’s quite a family feel.”

The post On ‘Alternative Walking Tours,’ Formerly Homeless People Share Their Perspectives appeared first on Reasons to be Cheerful.

It’s just before 10am and a queue has formed outside the Simon Community access hub in Glasgow’s city centre. People stamp their feet and blow on their fingers to try and thaw out. It’s minus five outside and many have spent the night huddled in parks or walking the streets, with temperatures dropping as low as minus seven.

Among those waiting for help at the charity’s doors are refugees who have recently been granted refugee status as part of Rishi Sunak’s drive to clear the legacy asylum backlog. The move, which this week resulted in the Prime Minister receiving a rebuke from the official statistics watchdog for making a series of false claims about it, has had the side effect of sending thousands of refugees out into a system that is unable to cope with them all at once.

As a result, within days of receiving their positive decision, many of those in the queue in Glasgow had been evicted from their accommodation and forced into destitution.

“The day I got my status, that is when my problems really started", said Mohamed, a recently-granted refugee from Sudan. “I waited two years for this decision, and I was so happy when I got it, but now I am out on the streets.” Less than two weeks after being granted leave to remain, Mohamed was evicted from his hotel and forced to sleep rough. “I went to a mosque nearby, but it was very full. When it closed at around midnight, I was walking, just walking, all night, trying not to be so cold.”

After a brief pause over the Christmas period, evictions started again this week. Frontline workers at the hub in Glasgow have already seen a spike in the numbers in need of emergency accommodation. “The Home Office’s plans to clear its self-made backlog is leading to unprecedented levels of harm,” said Simon Community Programme Director Annika Joy. “We’re deeply concerned that the Government’s failure to run a humane and efficient asylum system will mean charities and the caring people of Glasgow have to pick up the pieces.” 

At the front desk, Hazem, a frontline support worker, is busy rifling through photocopied identity documents and letters from the Home Office. “Every day, we see many, many people coming in who have just got their status, but who are homeless. Some are living in Glasgow, but they’re also coming here from Manchester, Newcastle, Leeds, even London to find somewhere to stay. The problem is, if they’ve filled out a homeless application at a different local authority, we can’t do anything for them. We can only offer them a ticket to go back there.”

Many frontline workers fear this obligation will mean more refugees fall through the net, passed from charity to charity and council to council, without the resources required to support them. “We can’t do anything, legally, other than passing them on to other services,” said Hazem.

Nearby, the Scottish Refugee Council’s caseworking team are also struggling to cope with an increase in housing enquiries from newly-granted refugees. “We’ve seen a doubling in the number of people presenting as homeless, with around forty people a week coming in now,” says Gary Christie, Head of Policy. “The Home Office knew this would happen; it’s about getting people off their books. We need much better crisis planning to mitigate the risks of homelessness.”

Paul Sweeney, Scottish Labour MSP, echoes these concerns. “Since the mass decisions on claims started coming through, I’m seeing an uptick in the number of people calling my office with housing enquiries. We engage with the asylum support team at [Glasgow City] council to help them, but there’s no council housing and a shortage of housing stock here. Meanwhile, there’s 1,395 empty homes in Glasgow. It’s about bringing them back into use.”

He added: “We keep trying to engage meaningfully with the UK Government, to plan for a transition from asylum status to refugee status which doesn’t cause mass destitution, but they’ve consistently been found wanting.”

Shelter Scotland Director, Alison Watson, said that, while the Home Office policies have exacerbated Glasgow’s housing crisis, they are not the root cause. “A serious and long-standing shortage of social homes is at the heart of the housing emergency in Glasgow and elsewhere in Scotland. Despite that, in its budget last month, the Scottish Government delivered brutal cuts to the budget for social homes; a decision they know will lead to the housing emergency deteriorating even further. The housing emergency exists in Glasgow because of choices made at Westminster and Holyrood, not because people have come to the city fleeing violence and persecution.”

Later that day, as night fell and temperatures dropped once again, the Simon Community street team prepared to face the cold. Alex, an outreach worker, said his main concern was the numbers of destitute refugees who remain unknown to them.

“I wonder if the numbers of refugees out there are even higher than we realise because they’re rough sleeping under the radar,” he said. “The tendency among refugees is to try and be invisible, probably because of their experience of violence and racism. A lot of them sleep in parks, rather than in the centre of town now. We’d just remind members of the public to tell us so we know where they are and we can offer the help they need.”

A Home Office spokesperson told Byline Times, "The pressure on the asylum system has continued to grow, which is why we have taken immediate action to speed up processing times and cut costs for taxpayers. 

"To minimise the risk of homelessness, we encourage individuals to make their onward plans as soon as possible after receiving their decision, whether that is leaving the UK following a refusal, or taking steps to integrate in the UK following a grant.

"We offer ample support once claims have been granted through Migrant Help, access to the labour market and advice on applying for Universal Credit."

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On 4 November, Suella Braverman took to the platform formerly known as Twitter. 

“We cannot allow our streets to be taken over by rows of tents occupied by people,” the Home Secretary wrote. “Living on the streets,” she claimed was – for many – “a lifestyle choice.”

Hers is a strategy that aims to restrict tents for rough sleepers. This includes, Braverman hopes, creating a new civil offence to stop charities giving tents to homeless people.

Despite a long list of shocking statements she has recently come out with, this latest announcement seems one of the hardest to fathom. Especially given the rise and rise of homelessness under her and her predecessor’s governance.

By the end of March this year, there were just shy of 80,000 households facing homelessness in England. This is the highest number on record – up some 25% since a new recording system was put in place by the Government in 2018. This new recording system is not ideal for accountability. It makes it hard to work out how bad homelessness has become under the Conservatives since 2010.

What we do know is that, at the turn of the millennium, the figures show that there were 77,986 homeless households in temporary accommodation in England, Scotland and Wales. By 2010, after a decade of Labour rule, that number had dropped some 21%. That year, a Conservative prime minister took power and homelessness began to rise again. Between 2010 and 2018 the number of homeless households in the three nations rose to reach some 96,669 – an increase in eight years of 58%.

More recently, albeit using different ways to calculate the number, there were more than 104,000 households listed in England as being in temporary accommodation. According to the charity Shelter “this is at the highest level ever”.

“Historical records,” it says, “show that numbers were consistently under half what it is today in the decades before this.” There were also some 131,000 children recorded in temporary accommodation in England in March 2023. 

Indeed, there are more homeless children in England than people in the British Army (112,000 regular and reserves).

After a point, such figures become meaningless. We begin to unsee the numbers and become numb to the homeless we do see. That’s why, in this picture, when Londoners pass by a man without glancing, it is hard to blame them. London’s streets are filled with too many like him. 

Some cry in their desperation. “Give me money,” a young woman asks daily outside Shepherd’s Bush underground station. Others kneel in supplication, begging for alms. Others walk the tube lines, asking for pennies in a world where few carry cash anymore. 

None seem to be doing it out of choice. Driven to that place by addiction, abuse or alienation, theirs are never lives that seem chosen.

Who would claim this man – huddled under a wet sleeping bag, ignored by passing crowds who have seen the numbers of unhoused swell and swell under years of Conservative rule – is there because of a "lifestyle choice"?  

Perhaps the Home Secretary would say that she did not mean him. But who did she mean then? And where can they be found? 

For as I walk the streets of London, I cannot seem to find them in my camera’s window.