Newsom had given hotel conversions the briefest of mentions in his РІР‚СљState of the StateРІР‚Сњ address dedicated to homelessness the previous month, as one of a few potential РІР‚Сљinnovative approachesРІР‚Сњ to the homelessness problem, like building tiny homes.Р”В«ut the more the group discussed the prospect over vending machine chips that night in March, the more sense it made to shelter the stateРІР‚в„ўs homeless in hotels during the pandemic. Prior to the pandemic, homelessness experts including Elliott had considered using vacant hotel rooms to house homeless people in mostly theoretical terms - it was a wish-list idea, one that would require some real money to implement, especially at any kind of scale. It was then that someone - Elliott canРІР‚в„ўt remember who - suggested hotel rooms.

How about using trailers to provide private spaces? No, they didnРІР‚в„ўt have the time or the money to procure enough trailers. No, they decided, amassing a bunch of people in tents would present the same contagion problems as crowded homeless shelters. Maybe the state could use big wedding tents to shelter homeless people, someone suggested. Based on sketchy early case and fatality estimates cobbled together from the data coming out of China in the pandemicРІР‚в„ўs early days, epidemiologists told California officials to expect the homeless to be a major vector for spread of the virus and to die by the thousands.Р”Р„s the group met into the pre-dawn hours, they batted around potential solutions. In California, home to 28 percent of the nationРІР‚в„ўs homeless population and 51 percent of the unsheltered population, the outlook was particularly dire.

David reiss homelessness