San Jose wins $25M to transform downtown resort into homeless housing
San Jose will use $25.2 million in new point out funding to change a downtown lodge into housing for homeless inhabitants, the city declared this week.
The 90-home Arena Lodge on The Alameda will be ordered by the city working with funding from Gov. Gavin Newsom’s Homekey program, which will help towns, counties and nonprofits get hotels, apartments and other buildings and transform them into homeless housing. The software has awarded funding for 10,000 housing units so much, and this week Newsom explained he intends to pour another $150 million into Homekey coffers.
“We’re doubling down on our country-foremost efforts to tackle the homelessness crisis,” he wrote in a news release. “Homekey has been lifetime-shifting for 1000’s of persons — and $150 million in supplemental funding will shelter countless numbers extra, providing them with the significant sources and safe and sound residing situations they deserve.”
Homekey doled out $846 million in 2020. In September, Newsom introduced a different $2.75 billion would go out above the study course of two several years — with about $200 million reserved for Bay Spot initiatives in the to start with calendar year. If authorised by the legislature, the extra $150 million Newsom proposed this 7 days will make a total of $1.5 billion in grants offered up coming year.
“We glimpse ahead to an more $150 million as proposed by the Governor to aid even additional models for persons browsing for hope, healing and a location to connect with property,” California Organization, Buyer Expert services and Housing Company Secretary Lourdes Castro Ramírez wrote in the launch.
Other Homekey awards this 7 days went to the city of Los Angeles, Los Angeles County, San Joaquin County, Fresno and Vallejo.
In San Jose, the Arena Hotel shortly will property homeless individuals as well as partners.
“In 2016, San José pioneered a new method to housing our unhoused neighbors by shopping for and changing hotels and motels into dignified living lodging for our most vulnerable people. That product properly moved 1000’s of San Joséans off the road,” Mayor Sam Liccardo stated in an emailed assertion. “Governor Newsom’s motivation to spend in motel conversions statewide by way of Homekey presents us an prospect to scale this remedy.”
San Jose obtained $14.5 million in Homekey resources to invest in the SureStay resort in 2020. That resort, which experienced been providing susceptible people free of charge rooms to shelter in put all through the COVID-19 pandemic, has struggled to transition to a long-phrase housing design wherever inhabitants pay underneath-market place-rate lease. The transition stalled when a condition lawmaker accused the city of proposing rents that had been too high and alerted the state’s Department of Housing and Group Advancement, which agreed. The metropolis disagreed with the state’s assertion, but acquiesced to reassessing its rent structure.
