Plan for homeless spurs hope, questions

Opening hotel, motel rooms for shelter a good idea, activists say, but it must be done quickly

As the Bay Area navigated its first day of an unprecedented, near-total shutdown amid worsening fears of the spreading coronavirus, officials were still trying to figure out how to get the region’s homeless off the streets as soon as possible.

A day after Gov. Gavin Newsom announced his intention to turn hotels and motels into emergency housing for the homeless throughout the state, details about how the plan would work were scant, but activists were optimistic.

Finding housing for these vulnerable residents so they can protect themselves from the virus is “a matter of life and death,” and hotels and motels seem like the obvious choice, said Jennifer Loving, CEO of Destination: Home.

“We have to be able to protect them, and we know that sleeping in a camp or sleeping within one foot of other people is not right,” she said.

Newsom announced Monday that the state had secured leases for 393 rooms in two hotels near the Oakland airport to house homeless people who are in a “position of real vulnerability” in the face of the global coronavirus pandemic.

He said that he hoped to ultimately secure thousands of rooms and that his office had identified 901 hotels as possible candidates and was in conversations with their owners.

His announcement came after seven Bay Area counties ordered their residents to shelter in place, and while homeless residents are exempt, the order “strongly urged” them to find shelter and local governments and service providers to make shelter available.

County officials working with the governor’s office were not ready to reveal specifics of the statewide plan Tuesday, but Ky Le, director of supportive housing for Santa Clara County, confirmed his office is working on the problem.

“We are working on temporary shelter spaces, both motel rooms and large facilities, to help with isolation, separation and social distancing, and just providing more shelter to unsheltered persons,” he said.

Talya Husbands-Hankin, an activist who works with the homeless in Oakland, said the plan to use hotels and motels seems like a good one but raises questions.

“I appreciate the effort, and hopefully it will be something that is actually helpful for people,” she said. “I’m curious how they’re actually going to implement that, though.”

For example, can people bring all their belongings to the hotels? What about their pets? How

will officials decide who gets a hotel room and who doesn’t? And once the coronavirus outbreak subsides, will these people be forced to go back onto the streets?

The plan also raises questions about scale. So far, the state has secured 393 rooms in Oakland — a city with more than 4,000 homeless people.

Whatever the state and local officials do, they need to do it fast, HusbandsHankin said. She’s been handing out hand sanitizer among residents of the city’s homeless encampments, and she said people living in the camps are scared. So is Husbands-Hankin.

“I’m terrified for everyone out on the streets right now,” she said.

Both Oakland and San Jose have stepped up hygiene measures, installing new hand-washing stations in encampments and passing out bottles of hand sanitizer. But the main need is for homeless residents to have somewhere to go to self-isolate so they don’t get sick — or if they already are sick, so they don’t spread the virus.

Newsom reported Monday that a homeless person in Santa Clara County had died of COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, but the county on Tuesday couldn’t confirm the death or provide additional information.

Phil Mastrocola, who runs a homeless shelter at

Grace Baptist Church in San Jose, applauded the governor’s effort to get the unhoused off the streets.

“I think it’s a great effort,” he said. “And we need everybody to help out. If people have vacant rooms of any kind, whether they’re hotel rooms or apartments or whatever, they should be used for people who are wandering around.”

Mastrocola has been talking to leaders of other churches — most of which have stopped services and other activities during the shutdown — about using their now-vacant buildings to shelter the homeless.

At the Grace Baptist Church shelter, which holds up to 50 people, Mastrocola and his team are making sure beds are 10 feet apart, meals are served individually

instead of in a long line, and guests have access to sanitizer, gloves and face masks.

Just as with the sevencounty shutdown, it’s unclear whether pulling the homeless off the streets and into hotels will help slow the spread of coronavirus, Loving said.

“We’re going to try this, and if this doesn’t work, we’re going to have to try something else,” she said. “We don’t know. We are literally on the front lines of this pandemic, and every day the world changes a little bit more.”