SACRAMENTO COUNTY, Calif. — Sacramento County is closing down it’s final two “Project Roomkey” hotels after three years.
The project started to shelter people experiencing homelessness during the pandemic, and now, the race is on to rehouse nearly 200 people.
Robert Jones has been living at the Vagabond Inn off 3rd Street in Sacramento for more than four months.
“You’ve got people with amputated feet, and they plan to kick everyone out of here on June 30," said Jones.
Many people have called it "home" for three years, due to Project Roomkey – a program established during the pandemic to provide the unhoused shelter in hotels and motels across the state.
Now, federal and state emergency COVID-19 funds have run out, and Sacramento County has to end the program. Janna Haynes, spokesperson for Sacramento County, said the program ran longer than they expected.
“Project Roomkey is incredibly expensive and not the best use of funds for the unhoused, $4,000 a month to stick someone in a hotel room and give them three meals a day could be used to permanently house them and that’s what we need to focus on,’ said Haynes.
According to the county, 184 people are still with Project Roomkey and need to be rehoused.
Haynes said two of the four hotels with Project Roomkey have already closed, and they have been rehousing people for more than year. She said the hope for anybody still at the Vagabond Inn is to get them into a housing situation.
“If for some reason we can’t make that happen for them, we will transfer them to an alternative shelter and continue to triage their housing needs,” said Haynes.
As the June deadline approaches for residents of the Vagabond Inn to pack up, the county is looking for new housing options. The county must provide residents with two reasonable housing accommodations, but if residents turn both of them down, they are exited from the program.
“I feel for lots of people. They have nobody. They have no follow up plans. They don’t have nothing right now,” said Jones.
ABC10 also learned that across California, hotels participating in project Roomkey were given the option to transition to Project Homekey, which is more permanent housing. This particular hotel declined and is exiting the program.
The Vagabond Inn in downtown Sacramento will close at the end of June . Rancho Cordova’s Comfort Inn will close at the end of October.
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