County officials acknowledge that the process has been lengthy but emphasize the importance of deliberation in choosing how to spend the money.
"Many of these are pilot projects," Sheehan said. "When you haven't done it before and you don't have a cookie cutter to apply, it makes it very difficult."
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Thursday, October 11, 2007 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 2 National Desk 1 inches; 31 words Type of Material: Correction
Supervisor's name: An article about Los Angeles County shelving a plan to open regional shelters for the homeless that ran in Sunday's California section misidentified Supervisor Don Knabe as Dan Knabe.
The city and county recently began collaborating more closely to move homeless people off the streets; in the past, city-county communication focused more on defusing crises rather than planning for the future, Ollague said.
"We made a mistake in thinking that it was going to be easy once the money was identified," Long said. "The hard part is to come up with the ideas."
In spite of the delays, advocates for the homeless prefer the thoughtful approach: "Should funding just be thrown out there onto the streets in the hopes that it'll do some good? No," said Tanya Tull, president and founder of Beyond Shelter, a Los Angeles nonprofit that helps connect people with permanent housing.
Tull gives the county high marks for "focusing time, energy and much-needed money" on what was long an invisible issue. But, echoing the worry of homeless prevention organizations around the region, she said $100 million is just "a drop in the bucket to what is needed."
--
susannah.rosenblatt@ latimes.com
