An Update

Last year, KCRW released the four-part series "Samaritans," which started with these questions: With all the hundreds of millions of dollars being spent on LA’s homelessness crisis, why does the problem keep getting worse? Are voter-approved spending measures passed in recent years making any difference? To find answers, I followed one woman who received a tiny fraction of those dollars for an entire year. Her name is Christine Curtiss. In the original series, you heard Christine go from living on the streets of LA's Mid-City neighborhood to a group shelter in Hollywood. Her story gave an inside look at LA's Byzantine and disorganized homeless services system.

But it also ended on a hopeful note, with a promise of permanent housing. Almost a year later, that promise has finally come through. Christine and I have kept in touch all this time, and in this bonus episode you'll hear what the end of the rainbow looks like for Christine. It's kind of a happy ending, except it's also a beginning.