DAVID GREENE, HOST:
For people who are homeless, getting a home can be just a first step towards stability. Over the summer, Anna Scott of member station KCRW profiled a woman on Skid Row nearby here in Los Angeles. Anna picks up that woman's story now.
ANNA SCOTT, BYLINE: Less than a year ago, Dawn Ghan slept in a crowded dorm at a homeless shelter in downtown LA right in the heart of Skid Row.
DAWN GHAN: You've got to train your mind to ignore all the sounds at night 'cause it's just crazy.
SCOTT: Now she has an entire apartment to herself. It's nothing fancy, just a boxy two-bedroom in Covina, a suburb 20 miles east of downtown LA. And technically Dawn only has half the apartment, she could get a roommate any time, but for now it gives her privacy.
GHAN: It felt so good to lay in a bed that was mine that I can call my bed and just lay down. It was so - I cried.
SCOTT: Dawn got this apartment through what's called a rapid rehousing program. Under its terms, when she first moved in her rent was around $200. It goes up a bit each month, and within a year it'll reach the full rate of about $900, but Dawn is already falling behind.
GHAN: It's been real tough. I'm a little minus in my account right now.
SCOTT: Are you worried about becoming homeless again?
GHAN: Very worried. Very, very worried.
SCOTT: Don's been on and off the streets since she was a teenager, decades at this point, mostly because of drug addiction. She's clean now, but she's had trouble finding a decent paying job. She dropped out of high school, has almost no work experience and a criminal record.
SAM TSEMBERIS: Rapid rehousing is for people that need housing only, and I think for some people housing only is not enough, you need supports.
SCOTT: Sam Tsemberis is president of Pathways Housing First, an organization that works around the country to house the chronically homeless. Rapid rehousing is a strategy that's proliferated in recent years, fueled by federal funding. The problem, Tsemberis says, is that at the same time there aren't enough resources for people who need long term or even permanent assistance, the ones who simply can't bootstrap it.
TSEMBERIS: The chronically homeless are people that need a lot of support and ongoing support. I think that there's a discomfort in the idea that people will need help for a long time.
SCOTT: A discomfort because it contradicts the idea that with enough hard work, anyone can succeed.
TSEMBERIS: Emphasis on self-sufficiency is one of the core tenants of the American way, a core belief that you should just by becoming a good person get it together. But homelessness is about poverty, it's about cash, not character.
SCOTT: In the case of Dawn Ghan, it's also about a history of instability and addiction and a lack of education, problems that two rooms in Covina can't fix.
GHAN: Will I be able to be a normal productive citizen? That's my goal. I hope that this works out so I can.
SCOTT: But you don't know yet.
GHAN: Right. It's definitely not something that I can say will never happen again because I could be right back on the street with nowhere to go.
SCOTT: Dawn lives on a very narrow ledge, always on the brink of homelessness. She's an example of why many housing advocates say the country needs to build a wider ledge.
For NPR News, I'm Anna Scott in Los Angeles.
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