Four cities seek grant to buy homes for homeless
Hayward, Union City, Livermore, Piedmont hoping for $12.5 million in Homekey funds
Four Alameda County cities are joining together to try to buy about a dozen homes to house homeless people and others with very low incomes.
Hayward, Union City, Livermore and Piedmont will be jointly applying for millions of dollars in state grants to fund the program, which will be modeled after a successful one launched in Oakland in 2020.
The four cities are partnering with the homelessness prevention nonprofit Bay Area Community Services and are seeking about $12.5 million from the state’s Project Homekey to buy the houses, which then could be renovated lightly to accommodate up to six people each.
Though many Project Homekey applications are from a single city or county hoping to buy and convert a hotel, motel or other buildings into housing for large numbers of people in one place, this joint plan would seek out houses scattered across the cities.
“Creating affordable housing with supportive services for people experiencing homelessness is a priority for the city of Livermore, and we’re excited to collaborate with other cities to create a regional program that leverages each other’s strengths while also meeting the unique needs of each city,” Mayor Bob Woerner said in an emailed statement.
If the state award is granted to the four cities, Bay Area Community Services would aim to create “deeply subsidized co-living environments where each resident gets their own bedroom, shared community living spaces and access to supportive services,” which could include anything from counseling, wellness checks, crisis intervention, or drug or alcohol treatment programs, according to a proposal letter from the nonprofit.
Residents would pay a portion of the rent they can afford each month. Although individual rents are not yet set for this project, the nonprofit said its rent rates are typically around one-third of market-rate rents for private bedrooms in shared homes.
In 2020, Bay Area Community
Services, using $10 million in Homekey grant money and $5 million in other donations, purchased 15 houses in Oakland and created 129 private rooms in them for homeless people under a program called Project Reclamation.
The city councils in all four cities approved the application for the Homekey funds.
According to an early 2019 Alameda County count of homeless people, Hayward counted among its residents 487 homeless people, and Livermore had 264, Union City had 106, and Piedmont had 0.
“I think it’s monumental that
we’re saying we are standing shoulder to shoulder with our neighbors. We see the people who are experiencing homelessness; this is an avenue to help some folks in our own jurisdiction, if a property becomes available,” Piedmont Mayor Teddy Gray King said at a Jan. 18 council meeting.
If the grants are approved by the state, Hayward is hoping to have up to five houses for the project in the city, and Piedmont and Livermore are seeking up to three each, and Union City would try to buy one or two houses, city staff reports from those cities said.
However, there are no guarantees homes will be available to be purchased in each city.
The list of potential houses in each city has not been completed, according to Union City staff reports and the proposal letter.
Though the plans won’t specifically be seeking out expensive homes, finding ones large enough to accommodate up to six people each in the scorchinghot Bay Area housing market will be a challenge, officials said.
“We understand the volatility of the single-family market right now,” Grace Streltzov, a housing analyst for Livermore, said.
In Hayward, to try to find houses available that cost roughly $900,000, “The majority of prospective homes are located between Interstate 880 and Mission Boulevard,” Hayward’s city staff report said.
Francisco Gomez Jr., the housing and community development manager for Union City, said the cities and nonprofits will be looking for four- or fivebedroom homes “that are move-in ready,” with minimal rehab needed to create private living spaces for residents.
“We’re looking for homes where we can get them, and we’re looking for good properties that really fit the criteria for us,” he said.
Even with a solid amount of state funding, the cities will be competing with other buyers, Gomez told the City Council at a meeting in January.
“We’re going up against people who will be having all-cash offers, people who are going to be willing to waive contingencies, things that we can’t necessarily do,” he said.
In Piedmont, the median home sale price is currently $1.9 million, according to Redfin and Realtor.com, and in Livermore it is $980,000, Hayward is about $870,000, and Union City is about $1 million.
“We feel optimistic that we’ll be able to acquire properties,” Streltzov of Livermore said before adding, “This market will not make it easy.”
The cities, in addition to leaning heavily on state funding to purchase and renovate the homes, also hope to get $1.5 million in total additional funding from Alameda County’s $12 million pool of American Rescue Plan money to help pay for operations and services at each home, city reports said.