Formerly homeless and one year sober, Brenna Shaw felt a pull to help others who shared her experience of living on the streets of Los Angeles. In 2023, she started working in homeless services at the Tarzana Treatment Center, where she juggled a caseload of 26 clients at a time. Earlier this year, she was preparing to start a new job at Homeless Healthcare Los Angeles, one of the area’s larger nonprofit service providers.
“It starts out at $25 [per hour], it’s awful,” said Shaw about the gig. “I’m okay with starting at the bottom. The other thing about this type of work is, unfortunately, a lot of people don’t stick around.”
Shaw’s experience — excitement to make a difference and disappointment with the material realities of working on the frontlines of the city’s more pressing social crisis — mirrors what many workers in the homeless services sector feel today. Entry-level workers in the homeless services sector in LA have historically been overworked, underpaid, and underappreciated…