Homelessness was becoming increasingly visible in the 1980’s across Southern California. In Orange County, the National Guard armories were providing temporary shelter on cold and rainy nights, and Los Angeles was already confronting a growing crisis on Skid Row.
After a volunteer project in Irvine, the Orange County Chapter of the Building Industry Association of Southern California came together around a simple but powerful idea: if homelessness is a housing problem, builders should be part of the solution. From that belief, HomeAid was born.
Over the decades that followed, homelessness grew more complex across Orange, Los Angeles and Ventura counties. Rising housing costs, a shortage of affordable homes, economic downturns and the needs of people experiencing chronic homelessness placed increasing pressure on communities and service providers.
What began largely as an emergency response to homelessness in the cold winter months, increasingly shifted toward a greater focus on permanent housing, prevention and supportive services. Through every evolution, one fundamental truth has remained: services can help stabilize a life, but ending homelessness ultimately requires a place to call home.
HomeAid has spent more than 37 years helping create those places. Founded in Orange County in 1989, HomeAid brought together builders, developers, trade partners, service providers, donors and community leaders to construct and renovate housing for people experiencing or at risk of homelessness.
The model was intentionally collaborative: rather than duplicate the critical work of nonprofit service providers, HomeAid would bring what the building industry does best - its expertise, resources and relationships - to help those organizations create the physical spaces where healing, stability and new beginnings could take place. The idea that began in Orange County ultimately grew into a national movement.
Today, the scale of the challenge across our region remains significant. Orange County’s 2026 Point-in-Time Count identified 6,321 people experiencing homelessness, representing a decrease from 2024 and, for the first time in the county’s PIT-count history, more people sheltered than unsheltered.
Los Angeles County faces a challenge more than ten times that size. The 2026 Greater Los Angeles Homeless Count estimated 73,040 people experiencing homelessness across Los Angeles County. Behind every number is a person - a parent trying to keep a family together, a senior living on a fixed income, a veteran, a young adult, or someone with a disability who needs more than temporary shelter. These are not simply statistics; they are our neighbors.
That reality is why the evolution of HomeAid OCLA matters. The expansion from Orange County into Los Angeles and Ventura brings a model built over decades to a region with an extraordinary need for housing solutions. We know that no organization can solve homelessness alone.
Progress requires cities, counties, developers, builders, nonprofit service providers, philanthropy and communities working together. HomeAid OCLA serves as a bridge between those public/private partnerships—leveraging the power of the building industry to help our nonprofit partners to create emergency, interim, affordable and permanent supportive housing where people can move forward with dignity and stability.
More than 37 years after HomeAid began, our geography has grown, the housing crisis has changed, and the need has become greater - but our purpose remains remarkably close to the one that inspired our founders in 1989.
Shelter can provide safety for tonight. Services can provide support for tomorrow. But a HOME provides the foundation for what comes next. From Orange County to Los Angeles, HomeAid OCLA will continue bringing people and resources together to do what we were created to do: build a future where everyone has a place to call home.
