SAN LEANDRO — San Leandro is planning on changing a motel on its southern edge right into a homeless navigation middle that would offer companies and non permanent shelter for homeless residents.
If San Leandro will get the wanted funding from the state to assist purchase the Nimitz Motel on Lewelling Boulevard close to Interstate 880 for $6.15 million, town might open the middle probably by subsequent spring.
The shelter would offer about 30 non permanent beds and rooms for adults, although not all the main points have been labored out.
To cowl most of the price of buying and renovating the motel, San Leandro has utilized for Undertaking HomeKey funding. Undertaking HomeKey is a state program that awards grants to assist cities and counties purchase current motels and inns, residences and different buildings to quickly home homeless folks.
Town expects to be taught by the top of June whether or not it should obtain the state cash within the newest spherical of Undertaking HomeKey funding. If it didn't, San Leandro will apply for the subsequent grant cycle.
The motel was chosen as a result of it's close to current homeless encampments, making it possible for folks residing within the encampments to make use of companies on the middle. As well as, retail companies, together with a grocery retailer and a Walmart, are lower than a mile away.
“Up to now, you’ve seen cities find [navigation centers] in distant industrial areas. It’s nearly like ‘out of sight, out of thoughts,’” San Leandro Group Growth Director Tom Liao stated in an interview. “However the newer type of method, particularly in denser, city areas like we now have, is to guarantee that the homeless clientele that’s being served is shut to those sources; some folks don’t have automobiles.”
Brief time period, the middle shall be offering emergency shelter for homeless residents. That program shall be overseen by Constructing Futures, a San Leandro nonprofit.
Constructing Futures already runs the San Leandro Shelter, which opened in 1986 and offers 30 beds to girls each with and with out youngsters. The nonprofit additionally operates the San Leandro Warming Shelter, an in a single day shelter open on chilly or wet nights from November to April.
Inside 5 years, San Leandro plans to transform the motel into extra everlasting housing for homeless residents. Eden Housing of Hayward, which focuses on reasonably priced housing, will run this system.
“Addressing and serving to to mitigate homelessness is a high precedence for the Metropolis Council based mostly on group wants,” Liao stated.
Nimitz Motel is at the moment nonetheless working whereas the acquisition is in escrow.
The homeless navigation middle venture has been within the works since February 2021, when metropolis employees offered the thought to the Metropolis Council. The council directed employees to search out potential properties.
Final fall, metropolis employees started negotiating with the Nimitz Motel homeowners, agreeing to buy it for $6.15 million. Funding for the venture will come from a number of sources, together with $5.5 million to $7.5 million from Undertaking HomeKey.
San Leandro has allotted $1.6 million to assist cowl working prices. A further $750,000 will come from American Rescue Plan Act funding.
“Town’s State Undertaking HomeKey software to accumulate and renovate the Nimitz Motel is a crucial transfer towards tackling the large-scale homeless disaster head-on,” Mayor Pauline Russo Cutter stated in a press release. “San Leandrians help this work however perceive this main first step has many future steps in our journey to deal with susceptible populations.”