We are proud to share with our Brilliant Corners community the advocacy efforts our External Affairs team engaged in during the winter season. We have played a key role in supporting meaningful advocacy efforts at the state and local level. Here is a recap of our recent External Affairs work.
State Level Engagement
In the month of February, Brilliant Corners team members from San Francisco, Los Angeles, and San Diego participated in Corporation for Supportive Housing (CSH) Advocacy Day, where we met with more than 30 legislative offices to advance key homelessness and housing priorities. Our advocacy focused on restoring annual funding for the Homeless Housing, Assistance and Prevention (HHAP) program to $1 billion, emphasizing that last year’s reduction to $500 million is insufficient to sustain current services. We also supported the creation of a $500 million Homelessness Housing Rescue Fund to provide forgivable loans and prevent returns to homelessness due to federal cuts, and advocated for AB 1165 (Gipson), which would require the state to develop an evidence-based financing plan that identifies the true cost of addressing homelessness and housing affordability.
In addition to CSH’s Advocacy Day, Brilliant Corners Director of External Affairs, Jose Osuna, and External Affairs Associate, Kayana Tyson, joined Housing CA’s Advocacy Day during their annual conference in March, reaching more than 70 legislative offices. There, Jose and Kayana advocated for a $10 billion affordable housing bond (AB 736 & SB 417) proposed for the June 2026 ballot to fund housing and homelessness solutions. In addition, we also supported SB 1091 (Caballero), which would create a Community Anti-Displacement and Preservation Program to acquire and preserve unsubsidized affordable rental housing, and AB 2146 (Stefani), aimed at speeding up housing placements by simplifying homelessness verification requirements that currently leave supportive housing units vacant.
Local Level Engagement
Where LA County’s Homelessness System Is Headed—and Why It Matters for Brilliant Corners
Over the past two years, LA County has been quietly reshaping how homelessness policy, funding, and accountability are organized across the region. Two new bodies—the Leadership Table for Regional Homeless Alignment and the Executive Committee for Regional Homeless Alignment—are now central to this shift. If you’ve heard terms like coordinated agenda, coordinated action plan, or “one regional plan” in recent public meetings, here’s what they mean, where things stand, and why this moment matters for organizations like Brilliant Corners.
A New Regional Governance Model
For years, LA County’s homelessness response has been fragmented—spread across cities, departments, service systems, and funding streams. The current effort aims to change that.
The Executive Committee for Regional Homeless Alignment (ECRHA) is the region’s primary decision-making and accountability body. Made up of elected leaders from the County, City of Los Angeles, and other cities, it’s responsible for developing one regional plan, setting shared goals and metrics, aligning public funding (including Measure A), and holding the system accountable for results.
The Leadership Table for Regional Homeless Alignment plays a different but equally important role. It brings together philanthropy, service providers, people with lived experience, business, labor, faith, and community leaders to advise the Executive Committee, promote alignment across sectors, and ensure the plan is grounded in real-world conditions. Importantly, the Leadership Table also helps apply public transparency and pressure—asking whether the system is actually delivering change on the ground. Through the appointment of our very own Director of External Affairs, Jose Osuna, to the Leadership Table, Brilliant Corners has been deeply involved in this process.
Together, these two bodies represent a shift toward regional coordination rather than jurisdiction-by-jurisdiction problem solving.
The Coordinated Agenda: Shared Goals, Finally Aligned
At this point, there is broad agreement on the coordinated agenda—the “what” the region is trying to accomplish.
In March 2025, LA County adopted a set of five regional homelessness goals through 2030, endorsed by the Executive Committee, Leadership Table, and County leadership. These include reducing street homelessness, preventing people from falling into homelessness, increasing housing placements, ensuring long-term housing stability, and ramping up affordable housing production.
Rather than debating whether these goals are right, the conversation has shifted to whether the system has the capacity, alignment, and resolve to meet them—and how success will actually be measured.
The Coordinated Action Plan: From Vision to Execution
The harder work is turning shared goals into a coordinated action plan—the “how.”
The Executive Committee is now leading this transition, using a combination of:
- A multiyear regional strategic framework
- Measure A implementation requirements
- Subregional action plans (such as those emerging in the South Bay and San Gabriel Valley)
Instead of a single, static document, the action plan is designed as a living framework—one that allows regions to tailor approaches locally, but only within shared metrics, standards of care, and accountability expectations.
Key priorities emerging include:
- Prevention as a front door strategy, not an afterthought
- Stronger integration of behavioral health and housing
- Encampment resolution efforts tied directly to housing exits
- Consistent expectations across providers, not wildly different rules by program or geography
- Real consequences for programs that miss performance targets
Where the Pressure Is Coming From
This is where the Leadership Table has been especially active.
In recent meetings, members have pushed hard on questions like:
- Who is responsible when goals aren’t met?
- How do we avoid local flexibility becoming fragmentation?
- Are lived experience voices shaping priorities—or just metrics?
- Will the system move fast enough to maintain public trust under Measure A?
The Leadership Table has largely endorsed the direction of the coordinated action plan—but it is deliberately acting as a pressure valve, asking whether alignment on paper will translate into meaningful outcomes for people experiencing homelessness.
Why This Matters for Brilliant Corners
For organizations like Brilliant Corners—working at the intersection of housing, services, and systems—this moment matters. The shift toward one regional plan, shared metrics, and greater accountability could reduce duplication, strengthen prevention and housing pathways, and reward approaches that keep people housed long-term. It also raises the bar for all of us: clearer expectations, more transparency, and deeper coordination across partners.
The work ahead won’t be easy. But after years of fragmentation, LA County is now moving—carefully but decisively—toward a more unified approach. Our role, alongside many others, is to help ensure that this alignment leads to real stability, dignity, and housing for people who need it most.