At the end of March, when the severity of the coronavirus pandemic was just beginning to become plain, the Oakland City Council passed an emergency resolution asking the city “to acquire buildings, facilities, and supplies for the provision of aide [sic] and housing to the homeless residents to prevent the spread of COVID-19 in homeless communities.” 

“The terrible pandemic we’re facing has given us a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to buy all these vacant properties, and we’re using federal stimulus money to do it,” Newsom said at the announcement in June. “Hand in hand with our county partners, we are on the precipice of the most meaningful expansion of homeless housing in decades.”1

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If all of the Project Homekey money is deployed to acquire housing at an average of $130,000 per unit, it will create around 4,600 new units for people experiencing homelessness. That’s housing for just around 3 percent of the state’s homeless population — far less than what’s needed, but still a substantial infusion of housing in a short period of time, advocates say. And it wouldn’t be possible without federal funds. 

“We can do this, but we can’t do it alone,” says Olatoye. “I think that’s what Homekey really highlights, is that we need a public partner. We need the state and we need the feds to help execute on this, We know what works. Give us the resources and we will execute on this.”

• 1. There were around 1,500 cases of COVID-19 in the whole state of California at the time. Now, the state has seen almost 800,000 cases, and more than 15,000 Californians have died from COVID-19. But, partly because of the early urgency to find housing in hotel rooms for some people experiencing homelessness, COVID-19 deaths among homeless communities in many cities have been lower than some once feared. And communities like Oakland are turning to a state program that is designed to establish thousands of new housing units for people experiencing homeless by the end of the year. The program, called Project Homekey, was announced by California Governor Gavin Newsom in June, and involves administering $600 million in state and federal emergency funds to buy hotels and establish permanent housing facilities for people experiencing homelessness. So far, the program is helping to create housing units at a third of the cost of building new.