Programs & Services
Access Center
Our Access Center, located in south Glendale, California, provides services to approximately 1,200 individuals experiencing homelessness each year. We work to move clients from sleeping on the streets or in other unstable environments, to residing in a stable and safe housing. At our Access Center, clients work one-on-one with our case managers and are connected to the resources they need to end their experience of homelessness.
Our Glendale Facility
45 Bed Interim Housing Shelter
Our interim shelter of 45 beds is available for clients enrolled in our programs, depending on availability. We also have a designated room for families.
Commercial Kitchen & Dining Room
Includes a well stocked pantry, commercial, stoves, several sinks, and service area. Seating capacity for over 50 people.
Secure Lobby and Waiting Area
Open to all clients during day hours, and where our intake case manager enrolls those who are in need of our help.
Laundry and Shower Facility
We have laundry and bathrooms onsite, available to shelter residents and clients enrolled in our programs.
Main Office
Ascencia’s staff, including administration, development, and case management teams also work out of this location.
Street Outreach
Ascencia’s street outreach teams provide services directly or through collaboration with other community agencies. We have teams based in Glendale, West Hollywood, and East Hollywood that go out in vans scanning the areas we serve for anyone in need of services.
In 2022, we added a nighttime outreach team in WeHo to encounter hundreds more who need our help. So far this expansion has had great success and we are hoping to offer nighttime outreach in EaHo and Glendale soon as well. In 2023, Ascencia enrolled 364 individuals via Street Outreach.
While some unhoused individuals are resistant to help, our staff does not give up. We build relationships with people on the streets and meet them where they are, doing whatever we can to help better their lives.
Street outreach services include the following:
- Providing water, food, and blankets to homeless encampments or individuals on the streets
- Street-based education and outreach
- Access to our Emergency Housing Program
- Intake and Enrollment into our Access Center
- Trauma Informed Care Training
- Information and referrals
- And much more.
Case Management
Our Case Managers work with clients to develop individualized plans that address short and long-term goals towards stability. Aside from the housing itself, assist clients with the following services.
Housing Navigation
Ascencia has developed partnerships with local property managers and owners who contact us when there is availability in their units. Case Managers and Housing Navigators help participants submit applications, establish relationships with property managers, obtain furniture and move-in, connect with their community, set up utilities, child-care, and education, and more.
Public Benefits Access and Advocacy
Ascencia assists individuals in applying for and qualifying for public benefits, including compiling all paperwork, documenting disabilities, and obtaining direct advocacy when eligibility is denied. Case managers assess the participants for potential eligibility for mainstream benefits, including social security, social security disability, CalFresh, CalWorks, and General Relief.
Permanent Supportive Housing
Ascencia links participants with continued services and helps formerly homeless people secure and sustain permanent supportive housing. There is no time limit for this program, but participants frequently move out as their financial position improves. Ascencia collaborates actively with other agencies to bring home-based services to participants.
Employment and Education Access
Ascencia works with partner agencies to link participants with significant barriers to employment, including those who have experienced justice system involvement to education, vocational training, and employment. Ascencia also assists individuals in identifying educational opportunities and enrolling in adult school, GED classes, community college, vocational training, and in meeting other educational goals.
Eviction prevention
Ascencia works with each participant to ensure that they do not jeopardize their residency. This includes working with each tenant to pay rent on time, maintain a reasonable standard of housekeeping, and get along with others. Staff members intervene when residents experience crises, or when they are hospitalized, so that they are not evicted during those periods.
Transportation assistance
Ascencia believes that independence and stability are supported by the ability to use public transportation. Ascencia assists participants in learning to use transit, obtain subsidized passes, and use dial-a-ride and Access services if they are eligible. Ascencia also has agency vans which can transport participants as needed.
Health and Wellness Services
Ascencia assists clients with primary medical care, mental health care, substance abuse disorders, self-care, and a variety of therapy services.
Our Case Management staff have training in the following areas:
- Adult First Aid and CPR
- Crisis Management
- Housing First and Harm Reduction
- Veteran Services
- Accessibility and Equity
- Naloxone (NARCAN) Overdose Training
- Substance Abuse Counseling
- Preparing SSI Disability Claims
- Domestic Violence Counseling Certification
- Intimate Partner violence and safety planning
- Care Transitions Intervention Coach Training
- Fair Housing/Housing Rights for People with Disabilities
- Compassionate Response to Cluttering and Hoarding
- Homeless Management Information System
Interim Housing
Ascencia provides a range of housing solutions for individuals and families in need of shelter. Ascencia’s interim housing sites provide emergency shelter for those working hard to move towards permanent housing. These programs are not drop-in shelters. If there is no beds available, clients will still be able to receive services, and will be added to the waitlist and contacted when a bed becomes available.
Glendale Access Center
Ascencia works with the city of Glendale and many community partners to run our Access Center, in the Glendale Continuum of Care. Within our Access Center, we have case management, administrative offices, a commercial kitchen, and a 45 bed shelter with a dedicated family room onsite.
Shelter beds are eligible to individuals and families experiencing homelessness once they enroll in our emergency shelter program and a bed becomes available. Shelter residents have a bed, a locker, 3 meals per day, and access to bathrooms, laundry, clothing, hygiene products, computers, books, and other resources.
To be considered for a bed in our shelter, clients must:
- Be actively working with a Case Manager in our Access Center
- Commit to saving and/or working to increase income
- Pass a TB test within 6 months of entrance
- Pass Megan’s Law Background Check
- Adhere to the client agreement signed during the intake process.
The Holloway Interim Housing Program
The Holloway is a 20-bed Interim Housing Program, located in the city of West Hollywood. This program will provide a safe, compassionate, and supportive environment where individuals experiencing homelessness can access essential services, stabilize their lives, and move toward permanent housing.
In 2022, the City of West Hollywood secured Homekey funding to address the capital and operating expenses to convert the Holloway Motel site into an interim housing and supportive services location for community members experiencing homelessness.
Ascencia staff, along with other non-profit partners, will help people with daily activities that set them up for success in moving to a permanent place to call home. Services and programs will include daily living support, healthcare and nutrition, financial planning, employment readiness, housing search support, 24/7 onsite staff and security, and more.
The Holloway Interim Housing Program is currently under construction and is anticipated to open in Summer 2025.
For more information, visit www.weho.org/holloway.
Supportive Housing Programs
Ascencia operates over 450 units of permanent supportive housing. Once clients in our programs qualify for permanent housing, they often enter one of our many housing programs that offers continued care and support from Ascencia staff. Our services don’t stop at housing, our Case Managers ensure that our clients who get housed, stay housed. In fact, 97% of the people we house are still housed 1 year later, a housing retention rate that is way above average for housing programs like ours. Here’s some more information on our various supportive housing programs:
Continuum of Care (CoC) Program
In partnership with the City of Glendale, dozens of clients/households who were formerly chronically homeless continue to receive case management support through Ascencia. Harm reduction approaches are used to engage clients in this program, removing the requirement for clients to be sober when entering the program.
Scattered Site and Housing Now
This 28-unit program is designed to serve adults who are chronically homeless through permanent housing and supportive services in efforts to assist clients towards self-sufficiency. Program participants and their case managers collaborate on developing a financial management plan, establishing income, and successfully maintaining their housing through services like rental subsidy, housing search and placement, therapy, and linkages to social services including educational and employment programs.
Next Step Permanent Supportive Housing
This 8-unit program is designed to serves formerly chronically homeless adults who have completed an addiction recovery program. Following housing placement, clients receive case management services to assist them with maintaining housing through support recovery, including access to a 12-step based program.
Burbank H.E.L.P. PSH Program
Homes, Equality and Links Program (H.E.L.P) is a 20-unit program is designed to provide housing and case management services to 15 individuals and 5 families who are chronically homeless using a harm reduction approach. Through a partnership with the City of Burbank, housing subsidy is provide through the Burbank Housing Authority with supportive services provided by Ascencia. Case management efforts focus on development of financial management plans, securing and maintaining benefits or employment income, and maintain housing.
Gardena Apartments
Ascencia owns and operates a 9-unit Multi-Family Apartment Complex just steps away from our Access Center. These 9 units currently house adults and families that meet the criteria of being: (1) chronically-homeless and (2) receive very-low incomes.
Integrated Health Homes
An extension of Ascencia’s Emergency Housing Program, Ascencia partners with local hospitals, to identify high cost, chronically homeless frequent hospital users and move them to permanent housing, reducing costs for hospitals and first-responders. We provide wrap-around services to help establish a medical home and connections to other needed resources.
Shelter Plus Care and Enhanced Care Management (ECM)
These programs works with clients who are either currently homeless or who are at risk of becoming homeless and who have severe health conditions, mental illness, or substance use concerns. The ECM Program is a state funded program from the Department of Health Care Services (DHCS) that offers extra services for qualified Medi-Cal managed members. We help clients get connected to housing subsidies and provide housing navigation. In addition, we assist clients with managing their physical and mental healthcare, help connect them with public benefits like SSI and SSDI. Once clients are permanently housed, we continue to provide housing retention support indefinitely. These services help our community improve health outcomes and decrease duplication of services and high hospital utilization.
The Enriched Residential Care Program (ERC)
The Enriched Residential Care Program (ERC) connects clients who are elderly or who have major chronic health conditions (or both) to assisted living facilities. These clients have the support of an ICMS ERC case manager who works to advocate for the client’s care needs with the facility staff and administrators. ICMS ERC case managers also facilitate health care and mental health care for clients including coordinating appointments and referrals with providers and accompanying clients to appointments.
“The work that Ascencia does is so critical because they’re focused on getting people into permanent, stable housing breaking the cycles of homelessness.”
Address
1851 Tyburn Street
Glendale, CA 91204
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Access Center Hours
Mon – Wed : 7am - 4pm
Thurs : 7am - 2pm
Open Fridays, but closed on
the last Friday of each month
Contact Us
(818) 246-7900
info@AscenciaCA.org
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