SACRAMENTO, Calif. — At 74 years old, David Nelson plays a mean game of pool. He fed a crinkled dollar into the table at Henry’s Lounge in downtown Sacramento Thursday afternoon and proceeded to rack the billiard balls.
Henry’s shares a building with the Capitol Park Hotel, where Nelson has lived for 25 years.
“You know, it's not the best place in the world, but it's home to me,” he said with a chuckle.
The Capitol Park Hotel provides low-income housing in the heart of downtown, and Nelson is on a fixed income. But now, he’s worried he’ll get kicked out.
The City of Sacramento is teaming up with the Sacramento Housing and Redevelopment Agency and Mercy Housing California on a plan to purchase the Capitol Park Hotel and turn it into a 180-bed homeless shelter.
Half of the rooms are currently empty, the city says, but the 90 people who call the hotel home now face displacement.
"Trying to move by myself would be almost impossible,” Nelson said.
But the city says they're not going to just leave these residents high and dry.
"The building is historic. It currently serves about 90 residents, who have first priority to both stay there but will be offered relocation assistance, which includes housing assistance by SHRA and a relocation assistance organization,” Hansen said. “They will come first, and we'll work to make sure that they are permanently and stably housed as we work to ramp up the triage facility."
Nelson, however, wonders what’s available at a comparable price. He currently pays $595 in rent. With medicine and other bills, he said his monthly expenses come to about $700.
"Anything much more than that is going to be very difficult for me,” he said.
He has COPD and his doctor is downtown. He uses public transportation, so he worries whether the only affordable housing he’ll be able to find will be far from the heart of Sacramento.
SHRA executive director La Shelle Dozier said current Capitol Park Hotel residents will be taken care of.
"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,” she said. “The funding to do that is going to be provided up front, so we have an opportunity to get started, but we will work until every single person has been relocated."
Sacramento City Council members will vote on the plan on Tuesday. The city hopes to start operating the Capitol Park Hotel as a homeless shelter no later than this fall, so moves are coming soon.
"I just have to take it like it is,” Nelson said. “I mean, you know, whatever happens is going to happen."
He sang along softly to the familiar parts of the song playing from the electronic jukebox on the wall of Henry’s Lounge as he shot pool with a friend. For now – a limited time - his haunt is just a few paces away from his front door.
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