California decides to use hotels and motels to shelter homeless people as coronavirus fear sparks

Tuesday, March 17, 2020

During a press conference in which the governor issued a sweeping order to close all bars, nightclubs, breweries, and winery tasting rooms in the state, he also answered questions about how the state planned to deal with the growing threat posed by the coronavirus in the homeless population. It remains unclear how many towns and cities may be involved with the homeless sheltering measures.

San Francisco has previously repurposed an SRO (single-room-occupancy hotel) — the Civic Center Hotel — into a Navigation Center back in 2016. And New York City regularly uses outer-borough motels to house the homeless, reportedly spending $364 million per year on the program.

Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg, who co-chairs the governors task force on homelessness, also gave a press conference Sunday in which he said that everyone needs to be indoors, as the Sacramento Bee reports.

He added that if they can use this terrible crisis to actually take the next steps to find enough beds, enough shelter enough navigation centers, enough permanent supportive housing to dramatically reduce the number on our streets, that would be an incredible silver lining out of a most difficult time.

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