State has 15K hotel rooms for homeless

About 38% filled two weeks into initiative, Newsom says

CAMPBELL >> California has reached its goal of securing more than 15,000 hotel rooms to get sick and vulnerable homeless residents off the streets and out of shelters, Gov. Gavin Newsom said Saturday, but filling those rooms with people is proving to be much slower.

The state has moved 4,211 homeless people into temporary hotel and motel rooms, Newsom said, filling about 38% of the nearly 11,000

rooms leased by California.

Standing with local officials outside a Motel 6 in Campbell, Newsom said the state had reached an agreement with the lodging giant to lease an additional 5,025 rooms at locations in 19 counties, pushing past the 15,000-room goal he had set for the initiative known as Project Roomkey when it launched this month. More than 150,000 people are homeless in California.

Meanwhile, the pandemic continues to claim lives. According to data compiled by this news organization, 96 new deaths were recorded Saturday in California, the most in a single day, bringing the death toll to 1,146, with 30,754 confirmed cases of the coronavirus.

Newsom said state officials also are looking into ways they can help city and county governments eventually buy the hotels and motels they are leasing to create permanent housing for the homeless after the coronavirus pandemic subsides. Details for doing so were scarce, though, as Newsom said funding would probably have to come from a mix of local, state, federal and private philanthropic sources.

The immediate goal, however, is for the thousands of hotel beds being leased across California to house homeless people who have tested positive for the coronavirus or were exposed to people infected with the virus, as well as those who are particularly vulnerable to COVID-19 because they are elderly or have certain medical conditions.

But only a fraction of hotel rooms procured for emergency shelter in the Bay Area have been filled — often to the frustration of advocates seeking places to house vulnerable people as clusters of coronavirus cases emerge in homeless shelters.

“We announced this two weeks ago, so respectfully I think this is a rather heroic effort in terms of being able to organize and mobilize and move forward,” Newsom said when asked about the slow pace of moving people into rooms.

In some cases, the problem has been local governments blocking efforts to move homeless people into hotels, Newsom said.

“There are folks who just turn their backs and say it’s someone else’s problem and point fingers, and we have a few of those unfortunately,” he said. “My heart goes out to them as well. I get the politics. It’s tough.”

Even those who welcome the idea face challenges because the effort requires cooperation between local, state and federal governments.

“The process is not overnight,” Newsom said. “There are a few layers here, and in each and every case there are complexities and nuances that need to be worked through.”

Reactions from advocates for homeless residents were mixed. Andrea Urton, CEO of Santa Clara County shelter operator Homefirst, said she is used to having to deal with slow-moving government bureaucracy.

“People are working as fast as they possibly can,” she said.

Urton said she can see the difference these efforts are making — one shelter Homefirst manages in Sunnyvale has gone from 175 residents to 88 as people move to hotels and new county shelters, which allows for social distancing.

“I’m hoping that it picks up, absolutely,” she said. “I think the powers that be have done a great job so far.”

But not everyone feels the speed has been sufficient to the scale of the crisis.

“The state is not moving fast enough. They could have commandeered more hotel rooms sooner,” said Candice Elder, founder and executive director of the East Oakland Collective. For homeless people trying to get a place to stay, Elder said, “the barriers to get in are high, the process is difficult.”

In Oakland, where city officials say they have secured 393 rooms at two hotels, just 56 homeless people had been offered lodging and 46 had moved in as of Thursday. Dozens of state-owned trailers brought in to house the homeless in Oakland, and more than 100 similar trailers in San Jose, all sit empty because officials say they are still being prepared for people to move in.

San Francisco had moved 874 people into its 1,271 rooms as of Wednesday.

In San Mateo County, where officials have not specified how many rooms have been obtained, 72 people had moved into hotels as of Friday.

Elder said her organization is part of a coalition that has been paying for rooms for vulnerable unhoused residents who haven’t been able to get into government-managed rooms.

One of them is 68-yearold Delbra Taylor, who is prediabetic and has hypertension. Despite being at high risk for COVID-19, she has not been able to get a room at a hotel leased by Alameda County. Before Elder’s organization helped her get a hotel room, Taylor said, it was impossible to follow health recommendations during the pandemic while living in her car.

“We can’t fight a disease with no tools,” Taylor said. “We don’t have the tools to use the bathroom, we don’t have the tools to wash our hands.”

Elder said she has heard from some who declined rooms because they were worried about restrictions on their ability to take essential trips or bring their belongings. She said many also were worried that once the crisis is over, they’ll be back out on the streets without their tents and other essential supplies they need to survive.

People who have been unable to get into a hotel room or shelter face additional challenges: the libraries, gyms, coffee shops and other businesses where before they could shower, use the bathroom or charge their phones, are closed.