KQED-
California has leased 15,000 hotel and motel rooms, mostly for people experiencing homelessness, but about half of them are sitting vacant, The Los Angeles Times reported on Tuesday.
Figures from Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office obtained by the Los Angeles Times revealed that 7,919 hotel rooms are full, leaving the remaining 7,700 empty. At most, the filled rooms are providing shelter for less than 5% of California’s 151,000 unhoused individuals, the paper calculated.
Even before the economic impact of the coronavirus outbreak, the homelessness crisis persisted as a top issue in California, and particularly in the Bay Area.
