Could a Strip of Dilapidated SoCal Motels Become a Bastion of New Housing for the Unhoused?

Beach Boulevard in Orange County is an eight-lane monster of a thoroughfare, packed full of decaying 1950s-era motels with names like the Jade Palace, the Robin Hood and the Riviera.

A half century ago these businesses were sleek symbols of America’s love affair with the open road, where families would pull in for a night or two while visiting nearby Disneyland or Knott’s Berry Farm.

But that legacy has long since faded.

“Honestly, they are about sex, drugs and violence,” said Marleta, a motel guest, while standing in a parking lot along Beach Boulevard.

Marleta, who said she didn’t want to give her last name because she she's embarrassed about her living situation, is unhoused. When she has the money, she rents a room at one of the motels on this strip, where she can take a hot shower, lock her door, and sleep in a real bed — even though she never finds the stays very restful.

“There’s a lot of prostitution, a lot of drugs and a lot of violence going on, all at the same time,” she said.

But those conditions could soon improve as a result of a statewide program aimed at dramatically reducing homelessness in California.

Through the initiative, called Homekey, the state is distributing funds to local governments and nonprofit developers to buy aging motels and other business properties and turn them into housing units for the unhoused. Since July 2020, the project has spurred the creation of roughly 6,000 affordable housing units statewide, according to Gov. Gavin Newsom's office.

This coming fiscal year, the Newsom administration has said it wants to spend nearly $3 billion to create housing for some 14,000 unhoused people — in what would be the largest single investment in new housing for the unhoused in California history.

Jamboree Housing Corporation, an Orange County nonprofit developer, recently received $26 million in Homekey funds to buy two motels along Beach Boulevard and turn them into long-term permanent housing for the unhoused, with on-site counseling services and security.

Michael Massie, the group’s chief housing development officer, says the sheer quantity of aging motels in Orange County offers enormous opportunities for creating housing.

He says the motels already serve as a kind of short-term housing for unhoused people — but that conditions are often squalid and dangerous.

“We know that this is often housing of last resort,” said Massie. “So when people can’t pull everything together to enter the housing market, they’ll use motels as a place to live.”

Hoping to get additional money from another round of Homekey funding, Jamboree Housing is already eyeing 10 more distressed properties in the vicinity, many of them motels, to buy and develop into housing for the unhoused.

Massie says cities increasingly see Homekey as both a way to fight homelessness and improve blight.

“We’re getting phone calls and cities are calling us and asking, ‘How did you do that? How did you make that happen? We have these motels as well,’” Massie said.

Anaheim Mayor Harry Sidhu, whose city has many aging motel properties, is eager to get on board.

The city just refurbished one such former motel — a project called Buena Esperanza, which predates Homekey — where 70 units of housing will soon be available to the unhoused.

Sidhu says Anaheim can do many more of these conversions with funding from the state.

“I’m going to do as many as possible if the funding is available to get these people off the street and clean the neighborhood,” he said.

For Marleta, those projects can't come soon enough. She urges local and state officials to move fast and stick to ambitious plans, because the need is huge.

“I mean, I know it’s probably more complicated than that,” she said. “But it’s hard out here. They need to clean it up, and the first thing they need to do is give people somewhere to live.”

This story was a collaboration between KQED and KCRW in Santa Monica.