‘Roach motels’ beat being homeless. But why can’t California innovate on housing?

We called them “roach motels,” but not for the reason you might think. True, roaches usually infested the seedy motels my family sometimes called home. But the nickname came from the Roach Motel insect traps marketed with the tagline: “Roaches check in but they don’t check out.”

See, you didn’t need a deposit to move into a motel, but the rent was high enough to ensure that you never saved up enough money to escape. You got stuck. For better or worse, however, motels saved us from homelessness. They continue to serve as “last-chance housing” for many families today.

“More than 1,700 households in Fresno County are served by hotel vouchers intended to house the homeless,” according to a recent Fresno Bee story by Cresencio Rodriguez-Delgado. Fresno County wants motel owners to upgrade their properties to make them better for families. The owners say costly improvements will force them to raise rents.

The story, part of the California Divide project, illuminated pressing questions: What constitutes shelter? Who should pay to bring repurposed spaces up to code? Are dilapidated motels the best we can do?

It also brought back memories of my time in Tulare’s gritty motels in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. With regal names like the Drake and the Conrad, they had been built for Highway 99 travelers whose increasing numbers in the ‘30s gave rise to “motor courts,” according to “Highway 99: A History of California’s Main Street” by Stephen H. Provost.

Such motels exist throughout California, including Sacramento and West Sacramento, and they now serve as emergency housing for many. In 2018, Los Angeles Times columnist Steve Lopez wrote about LA kids growing up in “the harsh light and the familiar, unnatural scent of motel sanitizing agents.”

I lived in motels, off and on, for three years during my childhood. They were sometimes the only shelter my mother could afford as she raised three children on low-wage jobs. Not ideal, but it beat the street. We were not the only family in this situation. Some families crowded five or six people into one room. Still, I prayed no one at school would find out where we lived.

In 2020, motels no longer represent rock bottom. A 2019 homeless count found people – including an estimated 100 children – living in 340 cars in Sacramento County. Motels are a step up from cars, and the county provides some struggling families with vouchers for motel stays. Local leaders are also working to transform some motels into transitional housing.

Motels don’t seem like permanent solutions, but maybe it’s time to expand our idea of shelter. We can’t cling to an American Dream that revolves around homeownership when so many people face the nightmare of sleeping in tents or cars because they can’t afford rent. Traditional apartments and houses – expensive and slow to build – aren’t solving the problem.

Refurbishing motels is a start, but we must go further. In an age of innovation, the definition of shelter is changing. Minimalist hipsters opt for “micro-units” with fold-up furniture. In places like Tokyo, you can rent “capsule hotels” – bed-sized pods with communal restrooms. Cutting-edge developers have repurposed shipping containers as living spaces and retail stores. I once stayed at The Winebox, a plush Chilean hotel built entirely of them.

Why don’t we have more options for affordable shelter?

“It’s a largely self-inflicted problem,” said Patrick Kennedy, a Bay Area developer at the forefront of housing innovation. Restrictive building codes and expensive labor agreements drive up costs, making it hard to build affordably, he said.

His advice to state leaders?

“Look outside of the ‘affordable housing industrial complex’ which, by its very nature, has a cost structure and management structure that results in much higher costs for the product,” said Kennedy, who believes private developers can build affordable housing faster and cheaper.

Kennedy said California should change building codes to allow for smaller units and adopt reusable building plans that cut out extra design costs. The use of prefabricated buildings also saves money, said Kennedy, who plans to erect a 40-studio prefab steel project on a 5,150-square-foot lot in Berkeley this year. Construction will take only four months.

“It’s a model that joins the efficiency of the private sector with the limited funds of the public sector,” said Kennedy. “We hope this new project will be an example of what could be done if politicians want to try something new.”

Can California think outside the box on housing? Signs indicate a shift. Tiny homes have replaced tents in some parts of Oakland, where the city has also created safe parking lots for people who live in vehicles. Sacramento is exploring similar options, including Renewal Village, which would include a mix of tents, cabins, tiny homes and single-family homes. Gov. Gavin Newsom, who set a goal of building 3.5 million housing units by 2025, recently doled out 100 state-owned trailers for emergency housing.

The message seems to be: Yes, California needs to build more traditional apartments and houses, but we can’t address the crisis by clinging only to outdated models of shelter. (A surge in traditional housing construction seems even more unlikely now that Senate Bill 50, which would have required cities to build more, is dead.)

In 2020, motels remain the housing of last resort. Three decades from now, people will still need affordable places to call home. Can we plan consciously for this inevitability instead of adapting through emergency?

Thirty years ago, I was ashamed of our little motel room. But it’s not shameful to live in a small space. It’s shameful to live in a society that, confronted with a massive humanitarian crisis, is too timid to pursue bigger solutions.

This story was originally published January 30, 2020 at 5:00 AM with the headline "‘Roach motels’ beat being homeless. But why can’t California innovate on housing?."