All 94 properties purchased through the state’s Project Homekey program, including several in the Bay Area, have closed escrow ahead of the Dec. 30 deadline, Gov. Gavin Newsom said Tuesday.
The state issued about $750 million in grants through the Homekey program, which provides funding to local jurisdictions across California to purchase hotels, motels, vacant apartment complexes and other buildings and turn them into supportive housing hubs.
In the Bay Area, Homekey grants helped local governments purchase hundreds of housing units in Alameda, Contra Costa, Santa Clara, San Mateo, Monterey and Sonoma counties.
“Homekey is possible because of federal support to slow the spread of COVID-19 and partnership from the Legislature and local leaders who didn’t settle for excuses and instead got to work to do something historic,” Newsom said in a statement.
The state initially received $550 million from the federal government for the Homekey program and later received another $200 million, all of which will fund the purchase of more than 6,000 units of transitional and permanent supportive housing for unhoused people across the state.
Several of the projects that cities and counties purchased through Homekey operated as temporary shelters in the early months of the coronavirus pandemic through the state’s Project Roomkey, a federally backed initiative to procure thousands of unused hotel and motel rooms for the state’s homeless residents during the pandemic.
The state received approval from the Federal Emergency Management Agency for Project Roomkey in early April.
“From crisis comes opportunity and that certainly has been the case for COVID-19 and homelessness,” said Graham Knaus, the executive director of the California State Association of Counties.
“Counties across the state rose to this challenge and joined the state in an extraordinary partnership to create new housing on an unprecedented timeline,” he said.
The state had to disperse the $750 million by Dec. 30, according to Newsom, because it came as a direct allocation from the federal government.
An additional $96 million in Homekey funding, coming from the state’s general fund and philanthropic sources, must be exhausted by June 30, 2022.
“The state of California, for decades, was not focused as much as we would have liked on this issue,” Newsom said of Project Homekey in September. “So we are trying to make up for that and we are trying to take responsibility and move forward deliberatively.”
18 comments
So did previous owner or taxpayers pick up the tab for what looked like roof repair going on at motel buildings in Pittsburg. An whataya want to bet the build dates of buildings purchased was not made public. Did owners unload oldest holdings in their portfolio ? ? ?
Will day to day repair of plumbing, electrical or room damage be contracted out or will county employees be doing it ? ? ?
Assuming Pittsburg Police will still be responding.
Getting on freeway headed eastbound at Loveridge you look right and there’s a blue plastic tarp hooked onto short cyclone fence next to project room key parking lot.
Took possible embarrassment of high pandemic death rate among homeless to finally get liberal politicians to . . . . . . . .
Risk of embarrassment or public ridicule, how sad that’s what it takes.
Yay
Newscum the slum lord has awoken
With your money he is a hater landlord
That dem voters are taught to hate and dispise
At least all our money he spent will get him canned
Only problem now is when they establish these drug dens
You will never be able to get rid of it
Or call the police
As your crime rate is about to go sky high
Enjoy easily swayed dem voters
This is what you wanted
State run slum dens slash brothels
It’s going to be wonderful
Young children legally assaulted by bums within 10 years of course
All legal and on our dime to boot
Ahhhhhh
Sanctuary
Enjoy
Your children will thank you
well probably not
Don’t say you didn’t want this
No take backs
This is so Kool…I can’t wait to stay in a hotel with my family traveling around California. We look forward to the methheads next store cooking up their next batch. Or how about the rapist checking out my daughters from the lovely balcony view into the swimming area. I can’t wait to workout in the gym with the excons pumping 500lbs on the bench press. Those facial tattoos are a game changer.
California is already the homeless capital of the U.S. Perhaps this effort will give California more of a global footprint. Sign the recall.
Unfortunately, this will become another money pit for CA taxpayers. CA politicians (State and local) continually are reactionary without thinking something through and that’s why CA is doomed!!!
So California, with the nation’s largest GDP and the 5th largest IN THE WORLD is doomed? That’s what people like you have been saying for decades and it hasn’t happened yet.
Go to YouTube and look at the videos of the tent cities in L.A. built up along the streets and tell me this is going well. The commentator on one I was watching last night asked why if the US can’t house its own, why the push to obtain even more immigrants. Other film showed parts of L.A. indistinguishable from Tijuana, Mexico.
The “Projects” in San Francisco are dangerous and full of gang activity. Check out Geneva Towers or Western Addition for starters. Government owned housing doesn’t work. Does Gov. Newsom do even a little research? Sign the recall.
So what DOES work? What’s your solution?
Is this an end-all-be-all solution? No, but it is a good solution for people who need a place to get back on their feet. Just being able to take showers regularly and have an address can turn around a person’s life.
An average of $9,000,000.00 per property? Holy macaroni, Mama! Some bureaucrats relatives are gonna be livin’ good, now that they’ve managed to dump their falling-apart slums onto the taxpayers’ backs.
I wonder… which ‘by-the-week’ properties did Cousin Paul unload?
Check your math. $750,000,000 + 96,000,000 = $846,000,000 total funding for 6,000 properties statewide. $846,000,000 / 6,000 = $141,000 per properties.
@Tired check your math again – it is 6000 units in 94 properties for average of per your math $141,000 per UNIT not per property. So that is for each hotel room! As Excuses has said – HOLY MACARONI!
What a waste.
California is addicted to stupid. Gavin got over 60% of the vote, can’t blame him.
Sure he did, with the help of Dominion 5.5 voting machines and illegal voters.
Last place I’d ever want to stay is in a hotel that housed the homeless, druggies, etc. No doubt full of bedbugs scabies, drug resistant bacteria and flesh fungus in the carpets. Yuk!!!
Okay so let me get this straight… All you people complaining about this program yet have no better solution for homelessness. So… you don’t want homeless people living in tents on the streets. And you don’t want hotels converted into homes for the homeless so they can have an opportunity to rebuild their lives. So what is the solution? Just kill all the homeless people? Send them to Mars? Oh, you don’t want “taxpayers” to pay for it. So how is the government supposed to pay for it when their source of income is taxpayers? Would love to hear solutions after you’re done complaining.
Also, these are hotels fully converted to housing. It’s not the Renaissance with 50% homeless and 50% available for vacationers. They’re turning rundown, old, vacant hotels and dorms into housing. It is an amazing solution and should be replicated nationwide. Do some reading instead of defaulting to hate because it’s a Newsom program.
Thanks for fighting the good fight, ToN. It’s much easier for someone to get back on their feet when they have a permanent address, and it costs less to the public when they’re off the street. Good for California, giving the most desperate people a chance to live a dignified life.
It’s amazing, but it’s certainly no solution.
People are homeless for a variety of reasons. Gavin’s answer is to get them into hotels so his voters won’t notice how bad the problem is. Treating all homeless people the same doesn’t address individual needs.
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