LA County Board of Supervisors approves $75M to fund acquisition
By Toi Creel
To help fight the housing crisis and a large population of homeless individuals, Los Angeles County has voted to acquire eight motels.
On Tuesday September 29 the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to approve the $75.5 million to fund the project.
The funding would be split up two ways: $60.7 million would come from a grant in the State’s Project Homekey program and roughly $14.7 million would come from federal CARES Act money.
The housing will serve as interim and permanent supportive housing, helping to target the thousands of homeless individuals that reside in LA County.
The eight properties that span from San Gabriel Valley to the South Bay will have to be renovated, according to the Count.
Under the rules of the $600 million Project Homekey program individual jurisdictions are obligated to provide matching funds for all acquisition costs over $100,000 per unit.
The following are the hotels LA is looking to acquire:
All of the hotels must be acquired by December 30, 2020.
The project as a whole is modeled off of a similar idea with a similar name— Project Roomkey, which aimed to use empty hotel rooms as temporary housing for homeless persons more at risk for the novel coronavirus (the elderly and those with pre-existing conditions). The program was able to house more than 5,000 homeless individuals but did not meet its original goal to shelter 15,000 people.
