REDWOOD CITY — A Consolation Inn and Suites may quickly be residence to new everlasting housing and high-quality assist to dozens of previously homeless individuals due to tens of millions of dollars in state and metropolis funds.
Gov. Gavin Newsom on Friday awarded $16 million in state Homekey funds to San Mateo County to remodel the resort at 1818 El Camino Actual on the south facet of downtown Redwood Metropolis and convey much-needed houses for unhoused individuals amid a worsening affordability disaster.
The 51-room resort — which is centrally positioned close to public transit, a public library, grocery shops, and two hospitals — will probably be renovated so as to add kitchenettes and officers hope they'll function transitional houses for the county’s 1,500 unhoused residents, 900 of them fully unsheltered.
Residents may have entry to on-site schooling, employment, psychological well being rehabilitation and medical help providers from third-party businesses like Alta Housing and the Psychological Well being Affiliation of San Mateo County.
“Each homeless particular person in San Mateo County who needs shelter deserves the chance to obtain it and these funds present a tremendous alternative to try this,” County Supervisor Mike Callagy mentioned. “These funds create actual and lasting change within the lives of these they assist and convey us one step nearer to reaching useful zero homelessness.”
Prior to now 12 months, the county has acquired almost $33 million from the Homekey program to buy the Pacific Inn in Redwood Metropolis and the TownePlace Suites Lodge. Farther down on the Peninsula, Mountain View has additionally acquired cash to remodel the Crestview Lodge into supportive housing.
In December 2021, the state gave San Mateo County $68 million, of which $55.3 million will probably be used to construct a homeless shelter and Navigation Middle with 240 beds in Redwood Metropolis, and the remaining will probably be used to assist the acquisition, rehab and operation of the 44-room Stone Villa Inn in San Mateo for rapid, non permanent shelter.
The addition of the Consolation Inn and Suites is anticipated to assist broaden the community of homeless providers within the county, add beds for town’s homeless, assist maintain individuals off the streets and from the risks of improvised housing.
That hazard turned clear on Sunday after a fireplace raged by tents, bedding and belongings at one of many metropolis’s largest and most well-established encampments on the Woodside Highway and El Camino cloverleaf interchange, just some minutes away from the Consolation Inn and Suites.
The fireplace started at 1:35 p.m. and ended lower than 4 hours later leading to no accidents, however an adjoining four-plex residential property and two vehicles additionally had been broken, in addition to many tents and private property.
On Monday, Mayor Giselle Hale referred to as on CalTrans to “come to the desk” this week to develop an instantaneous plan to guard the neighborhood “from the well being and questions of safety created by encampments on their land,” in keeping with an announcement.
With the information of the day past’s hearth hanging over the dialogue, the Redwood Metropolis Council later that night unanimously agreed to assist in the resort renovation by committing greater than $1.3 million in unspent federal funds.
Council members had been eager to maneuver ahead with the Homekey venture on the situation that a desire is given to Redwood Metropolis residents to stop extra encampment fires like Sunday’s and enhance the well being and security of town’s unhoused.
Encouraging council members to approve the proposed Consolation Inn and Suites funding throughout the council assembly, San Mateo County Division of Housing Director Raymond Hodges mentioned there is a chance for coordinating with that particular encampment to maneuver unhoused people into the resort.
“We wish to get anybody who’s on the road into our system with a coordinated entry system to maneuver them straight into housing if now we have the chance,” Hodges mentioned.
However it’s not rapid reduction for town’s homeless.
The county is presently anticipated to amass the positioning in early spring of this 12 months, and rehab will begin shortly thereafter by fall 2022, with potential leasing beginning in late 2022 or early 2023, Housing Management Supervisor Alin Lancaster mentioned.
Nonetheless, coordinating between a community of supportive housing throughout the county working with a referral system is the county and metropolis’s technique to rapidly get individuals off the streets and into protected residing circumstances.
“The council has clearly proven homelessness is a high precedence and it couldn’t be extra well timed than tonight given all that’s occurred this weekend,” council member Diane Howard mentioned. “This was a resort ready to be bought just about, so I’m glad it’s going to be renovated and rehabbed and made for Redwood Metropolis residents.”