California in the middle of a record-breaking heat wave, with temperatures 10 to 20 degrees hotter than usual. We’re talking about breaking three digits, over 100 degrees in some places in the region — that’s Fahrenheit.
Some of those most vulnerable are the more than 150,000 people who are experiencing homelessness across the state. In Los Angeles County, there are an estimated 60,000 people who are unhoused, even as some 20,000 hotel rooms remain vacant.
Last week, Governor Gavin Newsom announced new funding for the state’s Homekey program to create homes for people exiting homelessness. It builds on a program called Project Roomkey, which sheltered thousands of people experiencing homelessness during the pandemic at hotels and motels and is now set to end. Governor Newsom spoke at a news conference
Project Roomkey, in our view, was a brilliant idea. We had, during the pandemic, the entire city was bereft of tourists, and so there were tens of thousands — a hundred thousand hotel rooms that were vacant. We had people who were facing homelessness and housing insecurity, and we had hotel workers who were unemployed. And so, the idea was: Can we marry those three problems in this program? And it worked. We were able to put 10,000 unhoused folks into hotels — like Will, in one of our downtown properties, the L.A. Grand — where
— source democracynow.org | Sep 02, 2022