SACRAMENTO, Calif — Sacramento City Councilmember Steve Hansen unveiled a plan to convert Capitol Park Hotel in the heart of downtown into a homeless shelter.
He made the announcement Thursday alongside Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg, who is spearheading an initiative to increase the availability of resources for people who are experiencing homelessness in Sacramento.
The Capitol Park Hotel would serve homeless people specifically as a triage center for 18 to 24 months, while it's renovated into permanent supportive housing. Hansen hopes to open the shelter no later than this fall.
The Sacramento City Council will decide on Tuesday whether to allow city staff to move forward with this project.
The Capitol Park Hotel is located at the corner of L and Ninth streets and currently houses 90 low-income residents, who pay anyhwere from $500 to $600 per month in rent. Only half of the building's 180 rooms are occupied right now.
The City of Sacramento, Sacramento Housing and Redevelopment Agency (SHRA) and Mercy Housing California have presented a plan to buy Capitol Park Hotel and convert it into a space that helps people transition from homelessness.
Although the shelter could provide the city with 180 new shelter beds, the organizations involved are aware their plans will displace the current tenants.
La Shelle Dozier, executive director of SHRA, said that the people currently living at Capitol Park Hotel will be provided counselors who will help them find new housing.
"We will work until every single person has been relocated," Dozier said. “Relocation consultants will actually be assigned to each individual occupant who is there, to really craft where they want to go and where they want to be."
The new center would open in late summer or early fall of 2019. Hansen said that, with the current plan, the 90 tenants will not need to immediately move out when they open the triage center.
"Ultimately, we can ramp up the triage facility even if they are still there, but we want to make sure they aren't displaced in this project," Hansen said.
To buy the building and pay for transitional services for the current residents, the city would lend $13.37 million to Mercy Housing California. The city also plans to use $16 million in Measure U reserve funds on the project, according to a press release from the City of Sacramento. This money will also be used for the 100-bed Lot P shelter that was approved on March 26, as well as 50 beds in group homes throughout the city.
After two years, the Capitol Park Hotel is expected to be converted to a permanent supportive housing option where residents would each have a bathroom, kitchenette and support services as they transition from being homeless.
This project is expected to provide a long-term solution for people that are homeless, Dozier said. This project, she added, is aimed to immediately address the issue of homelessness while working toward fixing the longer-term issues people face while transitioning from homelessness.
There are more than 3,600 people experiencing homelessness in Sacramento County. In his State of the City address earlier this year, Mayor Darrell Steinberg said his top priority is getting people off the streets and into housing. He has challenged councilmembers to open a combined total of 800 beds between the city's eight districts. Thursday's announcement about Capitol Park Hotel accounts for 180 of those, and on Monday, the city announced plans for a 12-bed shelter for homeless LGBTQ youth.
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Lena Howland shared this Facebook live with an update to the Modesto Outdoor Emergency shelter system under the 9th St. Bridge in Modesto. More than one month after the tent shelter system opened, city officials say that the program is working and that any night they have about 350 - 400 people sleeping here. So far, they've been able to get 40 former residents into more permanent housing.