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.