California has leased 15,000 hotel and motel rooms, mostly for people experiencing homelessness, but about half of them are sitting vacant, The Los Angeles Times reported on Tuesday.
Figures from Gov. Gavin Newsom's office obtained by the Los Angeles Times revealed that 7,919 hotel rooms are full, leaving the remaining 7,700 empty. At most, the filled rooms are providing shelter for less than 5% of California's 151,000 unhoused individuals, the paper calculated.
Even before the economic impact of the coronavirus outbreak, the homelessness crisis persisted as a top issue in California, and particularly in the Bay Area.
Bay Area counties have mobilized resources to protect residents who are homeless during the pandemic, including leasing hotel rooms, RVs or other temporary shelters. But advocates for people experiencing homelessness in the region have told KQED that officials are struggling to implement health and safety guidelines for limiting the spread of COVID-19.
In San Francisco, officials recently launched city-sanctioned open-air encampments called "safe sleeping sites" to prevent another shelter outbreak and help unhoused people remain socially distant.