Three homeless housing projects planned for the East Bay are moving forward after winning millions in state grants to put a roof over the heads of hundreds of residents.
The state announced this week it awarded $34.5 million from its Homekey homeless housing program for the new facilities expected to open in Oakland, San Leandro, and a joint project in Hayward and Union City, as the region continues ramping up efforts to bring thousands of unhoused residents off the street.
The grants include:
– More than $15.5 million to the city of Oakland to buy and covert the Imperial Inn at 490 West MacArthur Blvd. into 48 units of permanent supportive housing.
– About $9.3 million to San Leandro to buy and convert the Nimitz Motel at 555 Lewelling Blvd. into 29 shelter units for short-term stays.
– Almost $9.7 million to Hayward and Union City to buy up to seven single-family homes throughout the two cities to create 37 permanent housing units.
“This new grant award brings Oakland to a total of 323 total housing units through seven awarded Homekey projects to date, meaning new homes for 323 of our most vulnerable residents,” said Mayor Sheng Thao in a statement.
Statewide, the $3.75 billion program has funded the creation of more than 14,000 housing and shelter units to support California’s more than 170,000 homeless people, who account for roughly a third of the nation’s unhoused population. In Alameda County, an estimated 9,750 people live on the streets or in shelters, according to the latest count in 2022, a 22% increase from 2019.
Launched during the pandemic, Homekey helps local governments buy and convert motels, apartments and other buildings into homeless housing, and construct new prefabricated projects from the ground up.
“Homekey continues to demonstrate that we can build quickly, and at a fraction of the usual cost, to deliver much-needed affordable homes for Californians struggling to find a place to live,” Gov. Gavin Newsom said in a statement.
In the Bay Area, developing a single unit of affordable housing can cost almost $1 million. Homekey projects can typically be completed for well under half that amount.
For the latest round of Homekey awards, the state is handing out more than $156 million in Homekey to a dozen projects in six counties to create 556 new homes and shelter units. Outside of Alameda County, the only other Bay Area county receiving an award is San Francisco, which won $18 million to convert a downtown hotel into a 67-unit shelter.