A new program trains college students for jobs helping homeless Californians. Can it survive?

With more than 187,000 people sleeping on California’s streets and in its shelters, the state’s homeless services industry is struggling to hire enough qualified workers to help them. 

Last year, Santa Monica College set out to fix that: It heralded the state’s first-ever community college program aimed at training the next generation of homeless service workers. But the program has fallen victim to many of the same challenges that have long stymied progress on homelessness in California, including unreliable funding, high attrition rates and political turmoil. 

In fact, it’s not clear if the much-needed program will persist. 

“We know the value added when somebody is adequately trained before they’re deployed,” said Vanessa Rios, a senior advisor for workforce development with the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, which funds the community college program. “It would be a disservice to our system should we not fund and support this effort. Where the dollars (will) come from, I don’t know.”

It’s the front-line jobs, where staff interact face-to-face with unhoused clients, that often are the most difficult for agencies to fill or keep filled. That includes doing outreach in encampments, staffing homeless shelters, and working as a case manager trying to find permanent housing for clients. 

More than 8,000 people worked in the homeless services sector in Los Angeles County in 2022, a report by consulting firm KPMG and United Way of Greater Los Angeles found. But the county still had more than 1,300 open positions and would need more than 2,200 workers on top of that — so, more than 11,500 altogether — to meet the needs of Los Angeles County’s homeless population. 

Even compared to other major U.S. cities such as Atlanta, Chicago or Houston, homeless service workers in Los Angeles have a higher turnover rate, according to a more recent KPMG report. 

It’s an issue all over the state. Most nonprofits that provide homeless services in California can’t help everyone who asks, in part because they struggle to recruit and retain staff, according to a 2024 study by the UC Berkeley Terner Center for Housing Innovation.

The new community college program was supposed to fill those holes by giving students the specific skills they need to succeed in homeless services. But amid perennial state budget uncertainty and questions about the region’s homeless services, Rios couldn’t say if her team will be able to fund another round of students at Santa Monica College. 

The state’s Homeless Housing, Assistance and Prevention fund initially supported the program with roughly $750,000. That fund is the main source of flexible money that California cities and counties use to combat homelessness. Once the $750,000 runs out, it’s not clear whether it will be renewed. Gov. Gavin Newsom’s proposed budget, released in January, did not include any new money for Homeless Housing, Assistance and Prevention, although the Legislature could still add some.

That uncertainty is a major problem. For years, nonprofits, cities and counties have said a lack of consistent state funding hampers their ability to fight homelessness. While Newsom has poured billions into the cause, it has largely been in one-time grants — not the predictable, ongoing funding that service providers say they need in order to plan long-term programs.

At the same time, the agency that funds the community college program is in crisis. The Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority — a joint agency of the city and county of LA — has all but imploded. Earlier this month, the LA County Board of Supervisors voted to pull its money out of the joint agency, following a scathing audit of its work. Three days later, the head of the agency said she would resign. Now,  the city is considering pulling out as well.

“We’re hopeful that we’re able to secure funding in the future,” said Patricia Ramos, dean of academic affairs for Santa Monica College. “But nothing is guaranteed.” 

Rios said her team is looking for additional money to support the college program, including from the state and philanthropic partners. If the community college program does continue, it wouldn’t accept another class of students until spring of 2026. 

‘Can I do this?’

When Tamyra Simpson saw a LinkedIn advertisement about the Santa Monica College program, she thought it was “too good to be true.”

Growing up, her grandmother, a substance use counselor, would pick up Simpson at her childhood home in Pasadena and travel to Skid Row in downtown Los Angeles, where they’d serve food to homeless people on Thanksgiving. 

“The women in my family, they’ve always been service-oriented,” she said. 

Simpson works as a nanny in the wealthy Los Feliz neighborhood near downtown Los Angeles, but said her goal is to eventually work in homeless services. 

She was one of about 70 people who applied for admission into the inaugural Santa Monica College homelessness services program, and one of just 27 students who were ultimately selected, said Steven Sedky, who oversees the program. Students take multiple courses over the span of two semesters, where they learn about the history of homeless services, effective practices to help homeless clients, and even strategies to avoid burnout. The program culminates in a paid internship at a relevant nonprofit or agency in Los Angeles County. 

Only about half of the students are left, Sedky said — an attrition rate “much higher than we initially anticipated.” 

Students dropped out for a variety of reasons, he said. One student lost housing, while other students struggled with the commute to class, which includes in-person meetings on Wednesdays. 

On Wednesday mornings, Simpson starts her nanny job at 7 am. Then, around 8 am, she begins the hour drive to Santa Monica. If traffic is bad, it can take up to an hour and a half. After class, a little after noon,  she drives back to Los Feliz and works another five hours  as a nanny. 

“I really ask myself, ‘Can I do this?’” she said. “But there’s so much value in this program, this experience. I don’t think I would have changed anything if I could.” 

After she graduates in June, she’ll face a job market rife with its own challenges. An entry-level position at LA-based homeless services nonprofit The People Concern, for example, typically pays between $21 and $25 an hour, said CEO John Maceri. Simpson said she makes about twice that much working as a nanny. 

“LA is an expensive place to live,” Maceri said. “It’s hard to survive.”

 “This sector does not pay livable wages unless you’re in senior management,” said Celina Alvarez, executive director of Housing Works. She helped create the Santa Monica College program and teaches a class there. “We’ve got to do better by (the workers). They are first responders. They don’t even have access to mental health support, considering they experience and witness a tremendous amount of human suffering on a daily basis.” 

Alvarez said between 10 and 15 of the 73 total jobs at her organization are vacant. 

At The People Concern, which will host two Santa Monica College students as interns, about 85 jobs are open — about 10% of their total positions. Once the interns complete the program, Maceri said his organization would be happy to hire them.

“The quality of the work is only as good as the quality of the people doing the work,” he said. “And we need more folks in the homelessness response system workforce.”

A difficult job

Low pay isn’t the only thing that makes people wary of jumping into a career in homeless services. The work is extremely grueling and difficult. Burnout is common. A lack of resources makes everything worse. Workers can try their best to help someone, but if there are no shelter beds or housing available, they can’t do much. That can be very frustrating, Maceri said. 

“Sometimes people have a fantasy of what the work is like, and then get into it and realize ‘Oh, this is different than what I thought,’” he said. “I think most people want to help, but the intensity of the work day in and day out is a lot to handle.”

A lack of adequate training makes it even harder, as workers may not know how to respond to the specific challenges they encounter in the field. Alvarez gave an example of a newly hired case manager at her organization: The case manager went to a client’s house to pick up the client for a psychiatric appointment. Before they left, the client injected themself with an unknown substance. The big-hearted case manager didn’t know what the client had injected but took them to their appointment anyway — a dangerous move that could have ended with the client becoming aggressive or even overdosing in the caseworker’s car, Alvarez said. 

Existing degree programs don’t train workers for the realities of what they’ll face in the field, such as navigating the bureaucracy of hospitals and nursing homes, or how to reunite a homeless individual with family, Rios said.

The program also tries to prepare students for burnout, by providing counselors who debrief with students after they go out in the field, and teach them techniques to cope with what they see.

But there are some intractable problems this training program can’t fix. 

For social workers, who have a master’s degree, it’s more lucrative to work as a therapist in private practice. Even other low-paying industries, such as child welfare, offer special grants or fellowships. In Los Angeles, the county’s decision to gut the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority makes it even harder for graduates to imagine this industry as a stable career choice.  

Still, as a current student, Simpson is hopeful that the community college program will continue. 

“As an inaugural cohort, there are going to be missteps. We’re essentially the guinea pigs,” she said. “At its core, it’s an incredible opportunity.” 

She said she’s well-aware of the pay cut that an entry-level job in homeless services might require, and that she’s willing to keep her full-time nanny position as long as it takes to find other work. 

Given the number of job vacancies, it’s unlikely that she’ll wait very long.