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Orozco, Norma From: Sent: To: Subject: Attachments: Signed hard copy attached. September 18, 2018 Kanter, Laura < Tuesday, September 18, 2018 2:20 PM eComment Rental Assistance Program KCSAleter.pdf Mayor Pulido and City Councilmembers City of Santa Ana 20 Civic Center Plaza P.O. Bo 1988, M31 Santa Ana,CA 92701 RE: Consolidated Annual Performance and Evaluation Report Support Development of a Tenant Based Rental Assistance Program The Gay and Lesbian Community Services Center of Orange County (The LGBT Center OC), urges the Santa Ana City Council to direct the Housing Development Analyst to develop and design a Tenant -Based Rental Assistance program alongside a community partners and impacted community members workgroup. The mission of the LGBT Center OC is to advocate on behalf of the Orange County lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer/questioning (LGBTQ) community, and to provide services that ensure its wellbeing and positive identity. Founded in 1971 and incorporated in 1975, The LGBT Center OC is the second oldest LGBT center in the nation. As the only comprehensive health and social service organization specifically targeting Orange County's LGBTQ community, we serve over 10,000 LGBTQ clients annually. The need for housing affordable to low-wage earners in Orange County, California, is enormous. This need is even more highlighted for the LGBT community. LGBT people face the same socio-economic challenges that other people who share their sex, race, ethnicity, age, and disability face. But they also face unique obstacles because of their sexual orientation and gender identity. A 2018 report from the LGBTQ Poverty Collaborative shows how indicators of economic disparity including food insecurity, housing instability, low-wage earning potential, and unemployment and under -employment are all heightened for LGBTQ communities. For example, LGBT people of color are more likely to live in poverty. For example, Latino same-sex couples are significantly more likely to be poor than Latino married heterosexual counterparts and are roughly three times more likely to live in poverty than white same-sex couples. In particular, twenty-four percent of lesbians and bisexual women are poor, compared with only 19% of heterosexual women. (It's not that gay and bisexual men aren't poor, but their poverty rates are roughly equal 13%) to those of heterosexual men.) Same sex couples are also more and more raising their own children, and studies have shown that these children have poverty rates twice those of children in heterosexual married couple households. As Santa Ana is such a young city, it should also be noted that while an estimated 1.6 million youth in the U.S. experience homelessness each year, research suggests that between 20% and 40% of them identify as LGBT. 19