The state has awarded Santa Clara County $16.7 million to convert a boutique hotel in Mountain View into supportive housing for homeless adults and youths.
Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office gave the Project Homekey funds to the county to convert the 61-room Crestview Hotel at 901 E. El Camino Real into 48 units of supportive housing, the San Jose Mercury News reported. Residents are expected to move in within a year.
The county eventually plans to knock the hotel down and build a new facility that would create 120 units of affordable housing.
The plan to convert the Crestview Hotel, near the border of Sunnyvale––as well as the Bella Vista Inn, a 64-unit hotel in Santa Clara––drew strong opposition from neighbors worried that the conversions would lead to a rise in crime.
Both are located on El Camino Real and together will cost $39 million in Homekey funding — money that comes from the state to address homelessness — for the county to purchase the hotels for a combined 180 units of affordable housing.
In January, the state awarded the county $22 million in Project Homekey funds to redevelop the Bella Vista Inn. The project is set to finish in December.
Though the supervisors ended up going ahead with the housing plans, they promised that a “community impact report” would get drafted 18 months after residents move into the Mountain View location. In addition, yearly meetings will be held by the site’s management company so neighbors can voice their opinions.
Aside from the Mountain View and Santa Clara hotels, Santa Clara County has applied for Project Homekey funding for seven additional sites in San Jose and Palo Alto with the intent of creating 800 units of housing.
In 2020, Project Homekey converted 1,600 Bay Area apartments, hotels and other units into housing for unhoused residents. The state offered another $2.75 billion in September 2021 for counties, cities and nonprofits for additional affordable housing units
This week, Newsom’s office distributed another $51.9 million in Project Homekey funds for over 150 units of housing in Orange, Placer, Los Angeles, Santa Cruz counties, as well as the city of Modesto.
[San Jose Mercury News] – Dana Bartholomew
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