This, the fourth evaluation report for this project, describes extensive developments in Los Angeles during 2007-2008 and how they build on earlier work. The pipeline for permanent supportive housing is expanding, as are activities to improve the health of homeless people, smooth the transition from jail to community, and address the needs of the most vulnerable homeless people. Numerous coordinating and collaborating structures have begun or are expanding as part of these developments. Cautious optimism is in order compared to four years ago, but there is still a long way to go.

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 (Burt 2008b; Burt and Anderson 2006), 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.

This report addresses the following evaluation questions:

• Are more, or different, public agencies and actors on board (e.g., mayors, agencies in specific cities, new county Board of Supervisors support)
• Are public agencies better coordinating their efforts to serve chronically/street homeless people?
• Are new and/or expanded sources of funding available, and/or is existing funding being used in more effective ways?

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