Officials hope to secure 15,000 rooms for shelter use
trickled in by taxi, chauffeured by van, on bicycle and on foot. Like guests in times not dominated by the coronavirus pandemic, they checked their bags, registered and received their room keys.
But it wasn’t the usual well-heeled crowd that arrived Monday afternoon at this West Los Angeles hotel, where rooms normally go for $389 a night. The guests were coming from nearby shelters and street encampments.
The hotel, on the outskirts of Century City, began taking in homeless people Friday. By midday Monday, its 130 rooms were more than half full, and the guests kept coming, sent — and sometimes delivered — by outreach workers who have been combing their caseloads to find those most vulnerable to COVID-19 and offer them lodging.
The Times is withholding the hotel’s name to discourage people who are not on the list of referred guests from showing up. It is the first of what will be dozens of hotels opened by the Los An - geles Homeless Services Authority to get seniors and medically fragile people off the streets and out of overcrowded shelters.
Sarah Dusseault, chairwoman of the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority’s governing commission, said it hopes to secure 15,000 hotel rooms that have been idled by the stay-at-home orders that have shut down much of the state.
“This is an audacious goal,” she acknowledged. “We’re working hard to make it a reality.”
Operating agreements
are in place with 11 hotels already and more are in the works, Dusseault said. About 1,700 rooms are expected to be available by the end of next week.
In addition to the hotel in West Los Angeles, a Canoga Park motel was converted into a makeshift shelter within the last few days.
The hotel program is the most ambitious effort by L.A. city and county officials to prevent a devastating spread of the coronavirus among homeless people. L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti has been converting city recreation centers into shelters. Sixteen are open, with a capacity of about 1,100.
Also, the county’s Office of Emergency Management has secured about 900 rooms in hotels and trailers for patients to use for quarantine or isolation if they have tested positive for the virus or have been exposed.
Meanwhile, Los Angeles County’s Homeless Initiative and the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority are working together to provide secure housing with individual hotel and motel rooms, medical supervision and meals for those who do not have COVID-19 symptoms but are vulnerable to it.
It’s a complex undertaking. The negotiations are being conducted on behalf of Los Angeles by state real estate experts. The county’s Homeless Initiative is executing the contracts and the L.A. Homeless Services Authority is setting up the hotels. In the case of the hotel in West L.A., the authority and its main contractor, St. Joseph Center in Venice, have taken over managing it too.
On Monday, baggage checker Omar Spry placed each piece of luggage in a zippered tent that can be heated to 120 degrees to kill bedbugs. His regular job is a housing inspector for the city of Los Angeles.
At a counter in the garage labeled #1, registered nurse and contract worker Patty Pinedo took each guest’s temperature and conducted a basic health screening.
At a table marked #2, security officers searched everyone’s bags.
Case managers wearing the green T-shirts of St. Joseph Center then ushered the homeless-peopleturned-hotel-guests into the lobby for orientation.
The immediate commitment is to provide them a home for 90 days, said Ahman Chapman, spokesman for the homeless authority. The hope is that they will be able to leave to a permanent home, not the streets.
“There are many things we’re learning that are new,” Chapman said. “Everybody’s had to adapt.”