LA County mulls plan to buy motels for homeless housing

Project Homekey would involve 8 properties — all in South or West LA County — and follow state’s Project Roomkey

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors
The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors

Los Angeles County is considering a plan to buy eight motels to use as permanent housing for people experiencing homelessness.

The properties would cost a combined $71 million, according to the Los Angeles Daily News. The county Board of Supervisors is mulling the move, which would be part of Project Homekey, a followup to Project Roomkey, a state initiative that housed vulnerable people in hotels funded primarily with federal coronavirus relief aid.

The state legislature has allocated $600 million for Project Homekey, and all but $50 million of that is federal coronavirus relief funds awarded to the state. Local agencies must match funding to tap that pool of money. L.A. County would do so with its own federal coronavirus relief funds, according to the report.

The L.A. County properties would include six Motel 6 locations in the city of L.A.. Two of the motels are in Compton and one is in Baldwin Park. All of the properties are in either South or West L.A. County.

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If the Board signs off on the plan on Tuesday, the purchases would be finalized with another vote later next month, according to the Daily News.

Separately, the City of Los Angele received $48.5 million for five Project Homekey acquisitions totaling 269 units. Two of those properties are in Hollywood.

The statewide Project Roomkey program, meanwhile, started with an ambitious goal of housing 15,000 people in L.A. County. Ultimately, around 6,000 people total have been housed in hotel rooms. Some other jurisdictions struggled to fill rooms they rented.

Around 4,000 people are currently housed through the program. The L.A. Homeless Services Authority began phasing out Project Roomkey earlier this month over budgetary concerns. [LADN]Dennis Lynch