Los Angeles, California – The failure of the Skid Row Housing Trust, one of Los Angeles’ largest supportive housing providers, underscores severe weaknesses in the region’s system for housing the city’s most vulnerable populations. A new report, Redesign Required: Lessons for Permanent Supportive Housing from Skid Row Housing Trust Buildings, outlines how inconsistent and insufficient rental subsidies, along with systemic inefficiencies, contributed to the trust’s collapse and continue to threaten the viability of other housing providers.
At its height, the Skid Row Housing Trust operated around 2,000 units across 29 properties, many of which were aging single-room occupancy (SRO) hotels in and around Skid Row. In early 2023, after years of deteriorating conditions, the organization declared it could no longer sustain operations. Buildings suffered from serious maintenance issues, including broken elevators, unsanitary facilities, and security problems. By January 2024, the trust had declared bankruptcy and dissolved, with the city stepping in to transfer the properties to new owners at a cost of nearly $40 million.
The report, based on internal financial data and interviews with over 30 individuals familiar with the trust’s operations, points to a chronic funding shortfall as the root cause. Public rental subsidies, intended to fund both housing and social services, were often too low and came through multiple sources with little consistency. In some cases, nearly identical units in different buildings were subsidized at rates differing by as much as $600 per month. Even newly constructed properties ran significant annual deficits once long-term maintenance and operational costs were factored in…