SANTA MONICA, CA-A joint venture between Hollywood Housing Community Corp. and Step Up on Second has broken ground and its second homeless housing apartment complex. Located at 520 Colorado Ave., Step Up on Colorado will provide housing, medical and mental health treatment to the homeless population in Santa Monica. L.A. County supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky along with Santa Monica Mayor Pam O'Connor and Executive Director of the Community Development Commission of the County of Los Angeles Sean Rogan spoke at the groundbreaking ceremony.

The 34-unit apartment complex will be built to LEED Silver certification standards with sustainable, durable and green materials and drought-tolerant landscaping. Near the EXPO line, residents will also have easy access to public transportation. Killefer Flammang Architects is designing the complex. The architecture firm has a long history designing housing for the homeless at an affordable cost. Last year, it designed the five-story, 69-unit homeless housing complex in Pershing Square. Shangri-La Construction is building the project and Carter Romanek Landscape Architects is handling the landscape design.

Step Up on Second's outreach team will work to locate and treat the homeless population using a "Housing First" model that focuses on getting homeless individuals off the streets before solving other problems. "Step Up's street outreach teams engage and support individuals identified as the most vulnerable on a Service Registry, a list of chronically homeless individuals most at risk of perishing on the streets if there is no intervention," Carolyn Baker, Step Up on Second VP of Community Development, tells GlobeSt.com. "The outreach teams use sustained community outreach and engagement to develop a relationship with the participant and address their immediate medical health and mental health needs. When and if the individual is ready, they can move into one of our permanent supportive housing units and receive ongoing intensive support to ensure housing retention." The model has been extremely successful: residents have a 90% housing retention rateand it costs 40% less than leaving the homeless on the street to use expensive public services.

Funding for the project was provided though several outlets. The City of Santa Monica and L.A. County's Community Development Commission provided funding, as well as the California Tax Allocation Committee. Additional funding was provided through Wells Fargo Bank, the Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco and Raymond James Housing Opportunity Fund.

Developer HCHC and homeless outreach and services organization Step Up on Second met through Yaroslavsky. "HCHC wanted to learn about permanent supportive housing and Housing First which is our strength, and we wanted to draw on their development experience," Tod Lipka, president and CEO of Step Up on Second, tells GlobeSt.com. "HCHC had an interest in expanding their geographic scope, so when we started our next project in Santa Monica it was a natural next step for them."

The partnership has worked on one other project together, a homeless housing complex in Hollywood, and they hope it is a partnership that will continue. "We plan to do more projects together and the model is so successful," says Lipka, who adds that they also want to expand the model. "Step Up is partnering with other affordable housing developers to create even more permanent supportive housing."