Housing that can be used now

Re “The real solution? Housing,” editorial, Oct. 14

The Times Editorial Board rightly chides Los Angeles city leaders for their anemic and bureaucratic approach to addressing the homelessness crisis with real-time housing solutions. However, you omit a practical, low-cost alternative: single-room occupancy, or SRO, hotels.

By some estimates, there are as many as 5,000 un- or under-occupied hotel rooms in SRO hotels in Los Angeles that could be re-purposed for such housing at a fraction of the cost of building permanent supportive housing. Since these buildings are already part of the city, they may face much less neighborhood or community opposition.

The AIDS Healthcare Foundation’s Healthy Housing Foundation is aggressively pursuing this SRO model. Over the past year we have repurposed nearly 600 housing units and now provide housing in four buildings on skid row and in Hollywood.

As city officials and housing advocates wait for the first Measure HHH housing units to come online in 2020 or 2021, basic math tells us the more than 52,000 homeless in Greater Los Angeles simply cannot be accommodated through that effort and that any and all means of getting more people housed faster must be explored.

Los Angeles The writer is senior director of communications for the AIDS Healthcare Foundation.