Thursday, July 9 | Volume 40 No.17

THURSDAY, JULY 9, 2026

L.A. Care Association Secures $500,000 Grant to Unlock Licensed Beds for Homeless Angelenos with Mental Illness

LOS ANGELES The Licensed Adult Resi- dential Care Association (LARCA) has been awarded $500,000 in Technical Assistance Funding to launch a pilot project to connect hundreds of underutilized licensed care facility beds to Los Angeles County's affordable hous- ing and homelessness prevention system, Ben- nie Tinson, Executive Director, announced.

"Four years ago, I was hired with a mandate to organize and strengthen licensed care as a cornerstone of the county's housing and health systems," Tinson explains. "This funding gives us the resources to finally connect those dots, and to make a meaningful dent in one of the most urgent crises facing Los Angeles."

The initiative, called the Community Market- place Hub, will provide coordinated technical assistance to state-licensed Adult Residential Facilities (ARF) and Residential Care Facili- ties for the Elderly (RCFE) operators across Los Angeles County.

The Association's goal is to activate avail- able capacity, streamline placement referrals and align public funding streams (including Medi-Cal's CalAIM program) and the state's Assisted Living Waiver, in order to serve more low-income Angelenos living with serious mental illness, co-occurring substance abuse disorders and physical disabilities.

ABOUT THE PILOT PROJECT LARCA represents more than 440 state-li- censed ARF and RCFE providers across Los Angeles County. Together, these facilities house and care for thousands of low-income residents, a population comprised of dispro- portionately high risk homeless, who often cycle through hospitals, jails, and emergency shelters when stable housing is unavailable.

An individual at an Adult Residential Facility makes his bed at a residential facility in the San Fernando Valley.

serious mental illness, developmental disabili- ties, physical health needs and co-occurring The Community Marketplace Hub will ad- conditions. The Association has grown to more dress that gap by:

• Activating underutilized licensed ARF/RCFE capacity and increasing placement rates across the county.

Reducing discharges to the homeless from hospitals, county jails, and other institutions. • Increasing facility participation in Medi-Cal (CalAIM), the Assisted Living Waiver (ALW) and other state and federally funded programs. • Establish a scalable, replicable model for co- ordinated housing access that can be adopted by other counties. The pilot program is de- signed to develop a model that can be repli- cated across California, addressing a gap long identified by housing advocates.

BACKGROUND

LARCA was founded to represent state-licensed ARF and RCFE providers in Los An- Joe Skeet geles County, facilities that serve adults with than 440 member facilities since its founding, making it one of the largest organized voices for licensed residential care in the region.

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