NEWS
Project Room Key
August 6,2020
Los Angeles, CA
Thousands of homeless people in LA County are now living in hotel rooms, otherwise empty because of the pandemic. VICE News looks at the program known as Project Roomkey.
VICE News looks at a program known as Project Roomkey, housing the homeless in LA
Juneteenth: A Conversation About Race, Homelessness, and Poverty
06/19/2020
Los Angeles, CA
This was a special panel discussion with three esteemed African American Female Leaders.
This was a special panel discussion with three esteemed African American Female Leaders. The conversation addressed institutional racism, homelessness, and generational poverty. Combatting the homeless crisis in Los Angeles will take an all-hands-on-deck approach and a commitment to dismantling the racist structures that have prevented so many of our Black and Brown neighbors from thriving.
Guest Panelist:
President & CEO of St. Joseph Center
Va Lecia Adams Kellum, Ph.D.
U.S. Congresswoman & Chair of the Congressional Black Caucus
Karen Bass
CEO of Funders Together to End Homelessness
Amanda Andere
Black people make up 8% of L.A. population and 34% of its homeless. That’s unacceptable
6/13/2020
Los Angeles, CA
In Los Angeles County, African Americans represent 7.9% of the population. In the latest homeless count, with double-digit city and county increases that are uniformly disappointing and disturbing, Black people
By STEVE LOPEZ COLUMNIST
In Los Angeles County, African Americans represent 7.9% of the population.
In the latest homeless count, with double-digit city and county increases that are uniformly disappointing and disturbing, Black people make up 34% of the 66,000-plus total.
As has been true in other recent years, that is out of whack by four times, and it’s a particularly important number to highlight today, as a reinvigorated national conversation on racial disparities is taking place across the United States.
“Without institutional racism, there would be 15,000 fewer people experiencing homelessness, almost all coming from Black and Native American populations,” said the summation of county statistics released this week by the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority.
On Friday, I toured skid row in downtown Los Angeles, which I first became familiar with 15 years ago after befriending a homeless African American musician. I vividly recall how police back then routinely issued tickets for things such as jaywalking to people who suffered from severe mental illness. My friend was a target more than once.
The area is still an outdoor museum of social and economic failure, with the stark results on full display. Tents and blue tarps are still everywhere, people sleep on clogged sidewalks, and the vast majority of homeless people on skid row — I’d say 75% or more — are Black.
You can find homeless Black people in any part of L.A. County these days, but why such a concentration on skid row?
For one thing, a county health official told me, many neighborhoods don’t have as much supportive housing, addiction rehabilitation and mental health resources as skid row does, due partly to organized neighborhood opposition throughout L.A. Through the decades, if you’re destitute, sick, hungry, traumatized, skid row is where you go. And for decades, Black Angelenos have disproportionately grappled with all of those things.
In L.A. County, racial disparities abound. Black people are twice as likely to die of COVID-19 as white people.
In Los Angeles Unified, the second-largest school district in the country, about 90% of those who attend district schools are students of color, and 80% of LAUSD students fall below the poverty line.
A Times study published a few days ago determined that of the nearly 900 people killed by police in L.A. County since 2000, 80% were people of color.
As I wrote on the first day of major demonstrations in Los Angeles, for all the wealth in the state that ranks as the fifth-largest economy of the world, schools are not equal, access to healthcare is not equal, criminal justice is not equal, and neither is access to good jobs with decent pay.
“You have all these institutional things that over decades and decades broke down the Black family,” said former state Sen. Kevin Murray, who was a member of the Legislative Black Caucus and now directs the Weingart homeless services agency in the heart of skid row.
What followed was mass incarceration and its aftermath.
When those incarcerated people were let out, Murray said, “sometimes after a relatively minor offense, they had nowhere to go and barriers kept them from gainful employment. They had no safety net, no family support system … and [homelessness] is the expected result of the kind of institutional racism people are now starting to resist.”
“What’s inherent in these disparities,” said Va Lecia Adams Kellum, who is on the front lines of the fight against homelessness as president of the St. Joseph Center, “is that rather than arrest kids, let’s educate them and let’s employ them because we know what happens when they’re educated and housed and working.”
Adams Kellum is on a LAHSA committee studying homelessness among African Americans. The chair of that committee is Jacqueline Waggoner, a LAHSA commissioner who works in the affordable housing field.
“Government created the differences we see in housing,” Waggoner said, touching on the long history of housing discrimination that drove segregation, and redlining, the practice of refusing to issue or insure mortgages in African American communities.
In a region where housing costs have soared and wages have remained flat, Waggoner said, people of color have been hit hardest.
“A lot of people are on the cliff edge of homelessness every day, and if you are poor and a person of color, you’re always with your feet half off that block,” Waggoner said.
It’s interesting that she mentioned redlining because when I was on skid row Friday, I stopped to see a guy I know who has been homeless for a decade or so and goes by the name of Old School. He wasn’t there, so I asked his homeless friend if he’d tell Old School to give me a call.
And how are you? I asked the friend.
“Not well,” he said, telling me about his diabetes and other issues. “How could I be?”
Old School called a few minutes later and I asked him why such a disproportionate number of homeless people in L.A. are Black.
No hesitation on his part.
“Because of deprivation,” Old School said. “That’s a penalty that was imposed on African American families. Employment opportunities dried up, housing dried up, and they drew a red line straight across the board. People are penalized for the color of their skin … and after the Rodney King riots, everyone was labeled a looter or a thief. The image of the African American male is of a thug.”
The demonstrations and violence across the U.S. since the killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer have unleashed more than a few racist outbursts, and that kind of ugliness will never go away. But there’s also been an encouraging multi-racial demand for reforms on many fronts.
“The collective action and multi-cultural protests give me hope, because nothing will change until … people see that it’s my brother, it’s my last breath, I can’t breathe because he can’t breathe,” said Adams Kellum. “As a Black person, I love seeing that it’s not just us saying this.”
But are we willing to do more than protest? Are we willing to move away from what Waggoner calls “race neutral” policymaking and embrace “racial equity” policymaking, even if money is short because of the pandemic’s devastating effect on government budgets?
Are we ready to end the glaring disparities in K-12 education? Are we ready to invest in more homeless prevention for the families of color most likely to show up in next year’s homeless count?
L.A. County needs another half-million units of affordable housing, Waggoner said, but there’s been fierce opposition to new development in California neighborhoods zoned for single-family homes.
“Is there a willingness in the community to say we want to fight racism by allowing density?” Waggoner asked.
Los Angeles is not alone when it comes to disproportionate homeless statistics, Waggoner said. Black people represent about 13% of the U.S. population and 40% of the nation’s homeless population.
“If we can fix it for Black people, we can fix it for everyone,” Waggoner said. “Because they’re the hardest hit.”
Meet Kimberly Hamilton of St. Joseph Center in Venice
5/25/2020
Venice, CA
Today we’d like to introduce you to Kimberly Hamilton.
Today we’d like to introduce you to Kimberly Hamilton.
So, before we jump into specific questions, why don’t you give us some details about you and your story.
I have always been invested in the success and growth of others. You can ask anyone who knows me and they will more than likely call me mama bear. I really struggled to plant my feet into the social service field upon earning my bachelor’s in Psychology at UC Santa Cruz. A lot of organizations were looking for someone with experience that I just hadn’t grasped yet as a fresh graduate and oftentimes, I felt hopeless about starting my career.
St. Joseph Center honestly found its way to me at the most perfect time in my life, with the help of my amazing mother. She met our fearless CEO, Dr. Va Lecia Adams Kellum at a mutual family friend’s get together and got her business card after hearing about the work that the agency does. I was blown away by their impact in the community and reached out to her the first chance I could get. I was invited into the agency to share more about myself and had such a good feeling in my gut the moment I walked inside, almost like I was home. This was the first place that I had honestly been seen and empowered to begin my journey as a social worker, after what seemed like an eternity of rejection.
I was in a space that created an opportunity for me that is literally the cornerstone of the agency: hope through empowerment. I was surrounded by compassionate workers who will use everything they have to support those in their care. Stepping into the agency propelled me into my purpose of serving and empowering others. I have been blessed with such a unique role that supports others while they gain skills and experience for the jobs they want to pursue in culinary and technology. I get to show up for others and remind them that anything is possible, as long as they work hard and keep their attention on it. I am so, so grateful for my journey at the agency. It has really helped me to ground myself in my purpose and I am inspired by the stories of our community members daily.
We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
It has been a bumpy road, with a couple of detours that I am grateful for because it really helped to prepare me for where I am at today. This is my first job in my field and I really struggled with imposter syndrome in the beginning. There were days where I would actually lookout for someone to notice I had NO idea what I was doing and then let me go. I had very high expectations for myself and wanted to be able to figure out everything and help everyone when I first started at the agency three years ago. I have since learned to cultivate boundaries and patience for myself because most of us don’t know what we are doing! I learned to trust myself and my compassionate heart and have become more accepting of the things I can’t control. I have had a lot of support from my coworkers to help overcome these challenges and am so grateful to have learned from them as I am still cultivating my craft as a social worker.
So, as you know, we’re impressed with St. Joseph Center – tell our readers more, for example what you’re most proud of and what sets you apart from others.
I am filled with pride when I think of the agency I am connect with. I am proud to say that we are a one stop shop for social services and help our community in a multitude of ways through housing, outreach and engagement, mental health and education/vocational training. You name it, we more than likely offer the service. SJC is filled with people who truly care about the well being of others, especially during a time of need. I am very proud to be connected to so many hard working people that help to uplift our community.
I reside in our education and vocation sector as vocational case manager. We have a culinary training program and web development bootcamp for women that are hosted out of our main site in Venice. I support our students and remove and challenges or barriers that impact their program participation or day to day lives. This can be anywhere from transportation barriers, housing issues and food insecurity, to name a few. I am known for figuring things out and making our students feel seen. I notice red flags and anticipate any challenges that may arise for our students as well while linking them to community services and resources.
I think what sets me apart from others is the level of care and compassion I put into my work. I treat others with a level of kindness that makes me very unique from my coworkers. This really helps me to create meaningful relationships with the people we serve. It is so important for the work that we do!
So, what’s next? Any big plans?
I want to reach more people and take my work a step further by earning a master’s degree. I feel that the knowledge and framework I will establish will help me to be a better social worker and empower myself with more opportunities.
I am bouncing between an LMFT and MSW program. I feel that my interest in serving others is very broad and would like the opportunity to hone in on that!
California Could House Its Entire Homeless Population in Empty Hotel Rooms Right Now
04/22/2020
Los Angeles, CA
Leaders have the authority to commandeer vacant hotels—but they aren’t using it
Listening to the radio in his car earlier this month, Joe heard California Gov. Gavin Newsom announce a new statewide program that would move homeless residents into hotel rooms to prevent the spread of COVID-19.
“Everyone seemed really concerned,” he says. “Even on the radio, people were saying, ‘Watch out as soon as this hits the homeless community.’” Joe was concerned, too, as he’d been living in his car since he was evicted from his Los Angeles apartment last August.
Joe—who didn’t want his last name to be shared—couldn’t find more information online about the governor’s announcement. But last year, he had given his phone number to an outreach team at St. Joseph’s Center, a homeless service provider that has worked in LA neighborhoods for 40 years. In mid-April, he got a call back: Joe’s age—he just turned 72—made him eligible for the program, and there was a hotel room ready for him.
Now Joe has access to hot showers, three meals a day, and a reliable power source to charge his laptop. He’s a musician, so he’s thrilled to have a comfortable place to play his guitar. He’s also eligible for rental assistance, and plans to research how to apply for Section 8 vouchers. “When you’re on the road all the time, it’s really hard to keep that up,” he says. “I feel so lucky and fortunate.”
Joe is among the first of California’s 150,000 homeless residents to be given hotel rooms as part of a new statewide initiative called Project Roomkey, the same program he heard about on the radio that day. In the April 3 announcement, the state set a goal of securing 15,000 hotel rooms for homeless residents—specifically those who test positive for COVID-19 and don’t require hospitalization, those who have been exposed and need to be isolated, and those like Joe who are over 65 or have underlying medical conditions, putting them at greater risk of dying from the disease.
Three weeks later, the state says it has met its goal of securing 15,000 rooms, heralding the program as a success. But only a third of those rooms are currently filled, meaning about 3 percent of the state’s homeless residents have been moved into hotels. While the state’s goal falls painfully short of what’s needed, the governor and many mayors possess extraordinary powers at the moment to seize private property for public use. Using this emergency authority to commandeer hotels could house people more quickly—and in much greater numbers—offering safer, faster protection for the state’s most at-risk residents.
Service providers are eager to participate. When St. Joseph’s Center’s CEO Va Lecia Adams Kellum got the call last month that her organization would be able to start housing their most vulnerable clients for up to three months through the program, her team knew exactly who needed to get inside first. Using a standardized data-tracking tool, caseworkers were able to prioritize their lists of clients based on health history, disabilities, and age. Within five days of getting the call, St. Joseph’s Center had moved 119 people, including Joe, into a hotel on LA’s Westside.
The hotel staff takes care of housekeeping, the local nonprofit Everytable delivers three meals a day, and a team of nurses and social workers coordinated by the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA) stop by for health and wellness checks. “The pandemic makes things more complicated, but the need is more urgent than ever,” says Kellum. “The key is all of us working together to get through this by saving as many lives as possible.”
A handful of hotels currently housing homeless residents are proving that the state’s initiative—by far the most comprehensive of any state in the U.S.—can work. According to the California Hotel & Lodging Association, over 1,100 California hotels have volunteered 145,000 rooms to the state’s health department for COVID-19 efforts. But a growing chorus of homeless advocates, legal advisors, and medical experts say without the swifter action of commandeering, more people will become sick and die.
“There is nearly universal agreement that unhoused residents are extremely vulnerable right now, both in terms of risk of contracting COVID-19 and of having negative outcomes from the disease if they do contract it,” says Shayla Myers, a public interest attorney with the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles. “Under the circumstances, commandeering property to bring unhoused people inside and de-densify shelters is no more extreme than issuing shelter-in-place orders and effectively shutting down most of the state to slow the spread of the disease.”
An estimated 80 percent of hotel rooms in the U.S. are currently empty, according to a report by STR, a data-forecasting company that tracks the hotel industry. Each night, in cities across the country, these hotels turn on the lights in vacant rooms to spell out words liked HOPE and LOVE, or display a single heart. It’s meant to show unity in the face of the deadly coronavirus pandemic, yet it literally highlights the empty rooms that could be used to keep people alive. Hundreds of thousands of hotel rooms sit unoccupied as the virus races across a country told to stay home—yet where over 575,000 people are experiencing homelessness on any given night.
Many U.S. cities are now attempting to use hotels to house people who are recovering from COVID-19 or need to self-isolate. But more cities are looking to hotels as a preventative measure to stop a disease which has started to rip through the country’s homeless communities, something experts say needs to happen immediately to prevent more deaths.
A study published at the end of March estimated that homeless residents infected with COVID-19 are twice as likely to be hospitalized and two to four times more likely to die compared to the general population—resulting in a total of 21,000 hospitalizations and 3,400 deaths nationwide. Moving unhoused people into hotel rooms could help prevent many of those hospitalizations and deaths, the study notes. “Emergency accommodations with private sleeping and bath space should be the preferred option for all clients.”
On March 18, before Project Roomkey had been announced, Newsom said the state was speaking with 900 hotels about housing homeless residents. By April 18, Newsom’s office had secured 10,974 hotel and motel rooms, with 4,211 homeless residents moved in. On that day, Newsom stood in a parking lot of a Motel 6 in the Silicon Valley city of Campbell, California, and announced that the state was making 5,025 rooms from the chain available at 47 locations in 19 counties.
But whether or not those counties choose to fill those rooms is being left up to local jurisdictions.
Under Project Roomkey, cities and counties negotiate most leases directly with hotels, which are paid for in part by Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) funds that are expected to cover 75 percent of the costs. Service providers in various parts of the state told Curbed that cities and counties are negotiating 90-day hotel leases for as low as $80 to $90 per night. With a new stream of revenue in place, the hotels are then able to rehire unemployed workers to provide cleaning services, operational tasks, and other managerial duties. A variety of subsidized meal programs are also available at the state and local levels.
Large cities including Los Angeles and San Francisco have since announced their own hotel room goals, some of which, if met locally, could end up doubling or tripling the state’s total number. But the move-in process has been slow overall, with a lack of information available for at-risk residents, and finger-pointing between cities and service providers for causing delays.
San Francisco, like Los Angeles and San Diego, had at first focused on moving unhoused people into large emergency shelters instead of hotel rooms. But shelters—along with other congregate living situations where people are sharing bathrooms, eating areas, and spaces to sleep—don’t offer protection against outbreaks of infectious diseases like COVID-19, says Steve Berg, vice president for programs and policy at the National Alliance to End Homelessness.
“The CDC has guidelines for what they should be doing, but even if you’re following those guidelines it’s not a guarantee of safety,” says Berg. “If someone contracts the virus, there will be a risk to others.”
Under Project Roomkey, cities and counties negotiate most leases directly with hotels, which are paid for in part by Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) funds that are expected to cover 75 percent of the costs. Service providers in various parts of the state told Curbed that cities and counties are negotiating 90-day hotel leases for as low as $80 to $90 per night. With a new stream of revenue in place, the hotels are then able to rehire unemployed workers to provide cleaning services, operational tasks, and other managerial duties. A variety of subsidized meal programs are also available at the state and local levels.
Large cities including Los Angeles and San Francisco have since announced their own hotel room goals, some of which, if met locally, could end up doubling or tripling the state’s total number. But the move-in process has been slow overall, with a lack of information available for at-risk residents, and finger-pointing between cities and service providers for causing delays.
San Francisco, like Los Angeles and San Diego, had at first focused on moving unhoused people into large emergency shelters instead of hotel rooms. But shelters—along with other congregate living situations where people are sharing bathrooms, eating areas, and spaces to sleep—don’t offer protection against outbreaks of infectious diseases like COVID-19, says Steve Berg, vice president for programs and policy at the National Alliance to End Homelessness.
“The CDC has guidelines for what they should be doing, but even if you’re following those guidelines it’s not a guarantee of safety,” says Berg. “If someone contracts the virus, there will be a risk to others.”
Last week, after the announcement of a major outbreak in San Francisco’s largest shelter, where at least 92 homeless residents have tested positive, county supervisors passed an ordinance that set a deadline for its 7,500 hotel rooms to be filled with homeless or at-risk residents by April 26—essentially ordering San Francisco Mayor London Breed to commandeer the rooms if the deals are not made. This would effectively house much of the city’s homeless population, COVID-positive or not. As of April 13, only 500 homeless residents had been moved into rooms, although city officials say the number is now over 700. The process has been so slow some supervisors are raising money through faith-based groups to move people into hotels themselves.
Chris Herring, a doctoral candidate in sociology at the University of California at Berkeley and homeless advocate in the Bay Area, says that San Francisco is taking the right approach overall. He argues that commandeering the empty hotels will save lives now, and being able to keep them filled until tourist demand ramps back up could give tens of thousands of unhoused residents enough
short-term stability to allow caseworkers to place them into long-term housing after the pandemic is over.
“We should think of this as the ideal triage strategy,” says Herring. “Use the hotel as a pause to get people safe and see if we can meet their needs better than we could before. Then, as that hotel stock runs down, let’s fight like hell to get stimulus money, Section 8 vouchers, or permanent supportive housing.”
According to Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, that’s the goal in LA, where the city has 36,000 unhoused residents. “In this crisis, we have a new countywide plan to find thousands of hotel and motel rooms to prevent the spread of the virus among people experiencing homelessness,” he said in his State of the City address on April 19. “And once those fellow Angelenos come inside, they must not return to the streets.”
On April 8, LA County officials set a goal to fill 15,000 hotel rooms by the end of the month, with 1,340 rooms meant to be occupied at 15 sites by the end of that week. But by April 13, only 514 rooms at eight hotels had been filled. One week later, the number of occupied rooms stood at 749.
As the number of COVID-19 cases in shelters grows, a new statewide coalition named No Vacancy mounted a series of actions urging California mayors to use their emergency powers and seize the necessary rooms to house people. Standing in front of hotels up and down the state last week—many of which were built with generous tax breaks from cities—advocates held signs and banners that read “Commandeer these vacant hotels for the unhoused now” and “Fill hotels, not graves.”
One of those signs hung on a hotel in Oakland, California, neighborhood where Debra Taylor has been homeless for six years. The 68-year-old believed her age and medical history of diabetes and hypertension made her a Project Roomkey candidate but was dismayed that she hadn’t yet been contacted by outreach teams—even after she had spoken with state workers setting up FEMA trailers for COVID-19 relief nearby. On a video call last week organized by local nonprofits that raised money to get Taylor into a hotel anyway, she said she had cried when she spent the previous night in a room that she could see from the street where she lives in her car. “Last night I was able to move my body to be able to relax,” she says. “I have not been to bed since 2014.”
Taylor expressed concern that without faster action by mayors to house homeless residents, the pandemic will disproportionately sicken and kill black Californians like herself. Only 6 percent of the state’s population is black, but black residents make up 40 percent of the state’s homeless population—and 11 percent of reported COVID-19 deaths.
“This is hitting the black race, but we’re out here and everybody is ignoring us? It’s not fair,” says Taylor. “You have all these hotels that are empty but you have all the people on the street where it’s hitting. We have no protection.”
St. Joseph Center works with local and national media to share news about our mission to address homelessness and poverty in the community. If you are interested in conducting media coverage of St. Joseph Center, please get in touch with us at publicrelations@stjosephctr.org