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Things are moving fast and a lot is happening, so you may have missed this in my reports on homelessness and COVID: While LA is snapping up 15,000 hotel rooms for people experiencing homelessness, Seattle/King County say they're limited by hotels' willingness to pitch in.
As we all know, the best medical advice is to stay at home and self-isolate, but homeless people are still stuck in "de-intensified" mass shelters. The city said yesterday that they are opening yet ANOTHER de-intensification site, a tent for 180 people.
So far, King County has found 400 motel rooms for homeless shelter guests, which is a drop in the bucket compared to the 12,000-plus people experiencing homelessness in the county. Meanwhile, 4 in 5 hotel rooms are sitting empty nationwide. https://viewfromthewing.com/new-all-time-low-nearly-4-out-of-5-hotel-rooms-are-empty/
The county and shelter providers are finding hotels on a one-off basis. (The city isn't doing hotels for homeless people at all, although they are committed to paying more than $3 million to rent an entire hotel for first responders through June). https://thecisforcrank.com/2020/03/27/city-rents-out-downtown-hotel-for-first-responders-at-280-a-night-potty-plan-scaled-back-and-more/
Advocates have suggested the city/county put out a request for qualifications for hotels to see if any are interested, which could work if the alternative to temporarily housing homeless people is going under.
The other option, which has been discussed in LA (even with 15,000 rooms, their much larger homeless population demands a much larger response) is commandeering hotel rooms under the emergency powers granted to the mayor or county executive.
It's vanishingly unlikely that @MayorJenny would even consider this, but what about @kcexec?
All speculation at this point, but it's worth noting that the biggest issue facing homeless people right now is that they have almost nowhere to wash hands, shower, or use the restroom, and hotels have sinks, toilets, and showers.
Renting hotel rooms would, of course, require assessments to determine which people need additional care and would be poor candidates for this option.
It would also require rethinking who homeless people are, and acknowledging that most don't need round-the-clock supervision. They just need homes.
In a separate thread, someone is claiming that homeless people drinking hand-washing station water is an "abuse to facilities." People drink handwashing water because they are thirsty and desperate. Thinking otherwise requires a presumption that homeless people are animals.
I'm not putting them on blast (you can find it if you want), but it is offensive beyond belief, as well as ignorant, to think that homeless people have easy access to clean water and simply choose to drink dirty water because they like it, are malicious, or don't know better.
