San Jose wins $25M to turn downtown hotel into homeless housing
San Jose will use $25.2 million in new point out funding to change a downtown hotel into housing for homeless inhabitants, the metropolis declared this 7 days.
The 90-place Arena Hotel on The Alameda will be bought by the town employing funding from Gov. Gavin Newsom’s Homekey software, which helps towns, counties and nonprofits receive motels, flats and other structures and flip them into homeless housing. The software has awarded funding for 10,000 housing models so considerably, and this 7 days Newsom explained he intends to pour one more $150 million into Homekey coffers.
“We’re doubling down on our nation-main attempts to deal with the homelessness crisis,” he wrote in a news launch. “Homekey has been lifestyle-altering for hundreds of folks — and $150 million in supplemental funding will shelter hundreds more, giving them with the essential means and risk-free living ailments they should have.”
Homekey doled out $846 million in 2020. In September, Newsom declared one more $2.75 billion would go out about the class of two many years — with about $200 million reserved for Bay Region initiatives in the first yr. If accredited by the legislature, the additional $150 million Newsom proposed this week will make a complete of $1.5 billion in grants readily available up coming yr.
“We search forward to an additional $150 million as proposed by the Governor to help even extra models for people looking for hope, therapeutic and a put to contact household,” California Company, Buyer Products and services and Housing Agency Secretary Lourdes Castro Ramírez wrote in the launch.
Other Homekey awards this week went to the city of Los Angeles, Los Angeles County, San Joaquin County, Fresno and Vallejo.
In San Jose, the Arena Resort shortly will household homeless people today as effectively as couples.
“In 2016, San José pioneered a new solution to housing our unhoused neighbors by buying and converting resorts and motels into dignified dwelling accommodations for our most vulnerable inhabitants. That product productively moved 1000’s of San Joséans off the avenue,” Mayor Sam Liccardo explained in an emailed statement. “Governor Newsom’s determination to spend in motel conversions statewide through Homekey gives us an option to scale this remedy.”
San Jose acquired $14.5 million in Homekey resources to invest in the SureStay hotel in 2020. That resort, which experienced been offering vulnerable residents no cost rooms to shelter in put during the COVID-19 pandemic, has struggled to transition to a extensive-time period housing model in which residents fork out down below-market-charge hire. The transition stalled when a condition lawmaker accused the town of proposing rents that ended up also substantial and alerted the state’s Section of Housing and Group Development, which agreed. The metropolis disagreed with the state’s assertion, but acquiesced to reassessing its rent framework.
