Sacramento to get millions from state to turn these hotels into homeless housing, mayor says
Although Sacramento was not included on a list of cities Gov. Gavin Newsom announced Wednesday that will receive the first round of state funding to convert hotels into permanent homeless housing, Mayor Darrell Steinberg said he expects the city to receive funding.
“We expect to get about $30 million in Homekey funds from the state to create more than 210 units of permanent supportive housing,” Steinberg, co-chair of Newsom’s homeless task force, said in a statement. “These converted motels and manufactured homes are a key piece of the $62-million plan we are executing to get people indoors and keep them indoors.”
The hotels include the Hawthorn Suites on Bercut Drive, just north of downtown, and the WoodSpring Suites near the intersection of Mack Road and La Mancha Way, in south Sacramento’s Parkway neighborhood. Both hotels would serve about 100 people in permanent housing for 55 years, Sacramento Housing and Redevelopment Agency officials said last month. The Hawthorn would serve as interim housing for the first three years.
Those hotels are different than the four officials opened under a similar state program called Project Roomkey, which is sheltering homeless in motel rooms during the coronavirus pandemic, but not permanently. Those hotels included one in Rancho Cordova, near the intersection of Folsom Boulevard and Hazel Avenue; one on Jibboom Street, next to the entrance to Discovery Park and Tiscornia Beach north of downtown Sacramento; one downtown at the corner of Third and I Streets; and one in the Woodlake neighborhood of north Sacramento.
Those motels will stay open through December, but the number of units will not reach 850 as originally announced. As of late July, there were 619 people staying in the motel rooms. Officials around that time shifted focus to trying to find permanent housing for the current guests instead of opening additional hotels. Since early April, about 1,165 people have spent time in the motels and trailers, which are on Cal Expo property with medical services.
The City Council last month approved $9 million toward the new Project Homekey hotels. That vote was part of a package that also included $4.7 million for rental assistance, for which the council will finalize the specifics on Tuesday, in addition to other items.
The city’s long-awaited controversial Meadowview shelter, which will serve 100 women in a white large temporary tent-like structure, is set to open this month in a city lot next to the Pannell Community Center.
Although Councilman Larry Carr, who represents Meadowview and Parkway, remains in strong opposition to that shelter, he supports the hotel conversion, he said.
“What’s important is location, location, location and this is a good location,” Carr said. “And it’s the type of shelter that’s needed where people have access to their own bathrooms, and their own kitchens.”
Even when the new projects open, homeless activists say there will still be many homeless men, women and families on the street with nowhere to go. They are asking city officials to open a parking lot where homeless can safely sleep in their vehicles, and to more quickly open “Safe Ground” sites where homeless can sleep in tents, tiny homes or manufactured homes.
A coalition of activists plans to hold a demonstration on Stockton Boulevard in south Sacramento Monday afternoon to make those demands, among others. They claim police continue to tell homeless people to relocate their camps, despite a court order prohibiting that during the pandemic.
Volunteers in a January 2019 count found 5,570 homeless people in Sacramento County during two nights, the majority of whom were in the city and were sleeping outdoors. The report estimated up to 11,000 people in Sacramento County would experience homelessness at some point during 2019.
The localities Newsom announced Wednesday that will receive the first round of state funding, totaling about $76 million, included the cities of San Jose, South Lake Tahoe, El Centro, Lake Elsinore, and the counties of Kern, Mendocino and Contra Costa. If Sacramento receives the expected $30 million from the program it will be a higher amount than any of those localities.
Sixty-seven jurisdictions across the state submitted applications for more than $1 billion, and will compete for the $600 million in available Project Homekey funding, a news release said.
This story was originally published September 18, 2020 at 1:28 PM.
