We envision a Los Angeles where every young person has a safe place to call home
and has the power to shape their own future.

Our Work

At LA Emissary, we recognize young people as the architects of their own lives and as leaders capable of redesigning the systems that
affect them.

Since our founding in 2022, LA Emissary has secured significant public and philanthropic investment to build youth-led structures that shift power, funding, and decision-making within the homeless response system.

Our work focuses on leadership development, shared governance, and cross-system collaboration to ensure that solutions to youth homelessness are driven by lived expertise.

We don’t just prepare young people to participate in systems, we work to change how those systems operate.

  • Our Local Organizing & Training work equips young people with lived experience to become confident advocates, organizers, and system leaders.

    Through political education, systems training, and leadership development, young people build the skills, language, and analysis needed to engage funders, providers, and government partners. This work transforms lived experience into recognized expertise, positioning youth to lead conversations around policy, funding, and accountability in the homeless response system.

  • Youth-led grantmaking is one of the most direct ways we shift power. The Young Adult Pooled Fund Table brings together system-impacted young adults ages 18–30 to make real funding decisions aimed at ending youth and young adult homelessness. Participants lead every step of the process, from setting funding priorities and eligibility criteria to reviewing applications, conducting interviews, and awarding grants.

    This model serves as a blueprint for how public and philanthropic institutions can meaningfully share decision-making power with young people and invest in housing, services, collaboration, and innovation led by those most impacted.

  • LA Emissary’s countywide systems work focuses on disrupting pathways into homelessness and transforming how institutions serve young people. Young people with lived experience co-lead cross-system tables alongside county agencies and system partners, including LAHSA, the Department of Children and Family Services, and the Department of Mental Health. Together, we take action on shared priorities to prevent and end youth homelessness by breaking down silos and reshaping policy and practice.

    Our advocacy work ensures that youth voices are present and influential in homelessness policy conversations. We support young people with lived experience to respond in real time to policy proposals, legislation, and system changes affecting youth homelessness. By building collective power and shared analysis, we help ensure that youth and young adults are not an afterthought in homelessness policy, but a central focus in decisions that shape their futures.