Centering the Needs of Justice-Involved LA Residents

Recently, LISC LA had the opportunity to meet the leadership team behind the Los Angeles Regional Reentry Partnership (LARRP), a network of over 400 providers and advocates focused on serving and building equity for justice-involved residents of Los Angeles County.

Formed in 2011, LARRP has become convener of reentry resources and a centralized space where groups can collaborate and advocate for increased investment in housing, integrated systems of care, and removing barriers to reentry. As the third-party administrator for LA County’s Alternatives to Incarceration (ATI) diversion programs, LISC LA seeks to partner with and support LARRP in exactly those endeavors.  

LARRP Executive Director and Co-Founder Troy Vaughn leads LISC LA Executive Director Tunua Thrash-Ntuk and the LISC LA team on a tour of a supportive housing site in South Los Angeles.

While visiting LARRP headquarters, LISC LA staff toured their central offices and new programming space where job training, clinical services, and other reentry programs will take place.  

We also toured small, home-like, bridge housing sites operated by LARRP organization, Christ Centered Ministries, which offer housing and clinical services to people in LA County’s Office of Diversion and Reentry (ODR) programs.  

LARRP Executive Director Troy Vaughn also showed our team a shared-living, permanent housing unit which included multiple single rooms with private bathrooms.  

As the need for housing in Los Angeles continues to grow at a dire pace, Troy and the LARRP team hope to ensure creative, communal housing options like this are accessible to LA’s unhoused residents as soon as possible.  

At LISC LA, we understand this need not only via our efforts to increase affordable housing but also through our work with the Alternatives to Incarceration (ATI) initiative. As part of this work, LISC LA contracts with community-based organizations to provide much needed housing, mental health and substance use treatment services to people being diverted from criminal justice system.  

We are also striving to meet the demand for accessible housing through our ATI Incubation Academy. The Incubation Academy seeks to build capacity among developing, grassroots housing providers to ensure they have the legal, financial, and service provision infrastructures in place to provide high-quality care to LA County residents. Through this effort, LISC LA seeks not only to create a wealth of additional resources for the people in our city, but to also ensure we are prioritizing investment in community-based organizations that have been systemically excluded from these investments.  

Given the shared focus of our two organizations on building power within communities of color that have been most negatively affected by the criminal justice system, the LISC LA team hopes to partner partnership with LARRP and the agencies with whom they collaborate in the near future!  

Learn more about the County of Los Angeles ATI Initiative here and here. 

Apply to take part in the ATI Incubation Academy here.