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Historic Downtown Sacramento Building May Become Giant Homeless Shelter

The Sacramento City Council next week is expected to consider a proposal to partner with the Sacramento Housing and Redevelopment Agency and Mercy Housing California to buy the Capitol Park Hotel at the corner of 9th and L streets in downtown and turn the building into a homeless shelter.

Councilman Steve Hansen, who represents the district where the historic building sits, would like to see 180-bed shelter open by next fall. It would remain open for one year.

The hotel has 180 rooms, but half of them currently sit empty, according to Hansen. The hotel's owner is in the process of selling the building to Mercy Housing, and that organization will work to relocate the people currently living in the building. Many of them are elderly, low-income, and were once homeless themselves. The City plans to lease the building from Mercy and contract with SHRA to oversee its operation.

It possible the shelter could be open by this summer.

Hansen is proposing this downtown location for a shelter at the request of Mayor Darrell Steinberg, who asked each council member to find possible sites to house the homeless in their respective districts.

"Capitol Park Hotel provides an unusual opportunity to add shelter beds quickly and in a part of our city that desperately needs them," Mayor Steinberg said in a written statement. "Getting people off the streets in our downtown core will not only help them reclaim their lives, it will provide relief to downtown residents and businesses that are daily confronted with the health and safety impacts of large numbers of people living outdoors."

Hansen said he believes the Capitol Hotel property is best suited property for a low-barrier shelter to house the homeless with all of their belongings, their partners, and possibly even pets.

"Across the city, we all have to chip in and do our part to make more shelter beds available for our city’s unsheltered residents, and I’m committed to meeting that need in District 4," said Hansen. "Last year, Mercy Housing approached the City with the concept of a permanent supportive housing development at Capitol Park Hotel. This upcoming Tuesday, the Mayor & Council will have an opportunity to leverage this site sooner to provide a much needed low-barrier triage center to help those on the streets and reduce the impacts of the homeless on our neighborhood and businesses."

The new homeless facility would be what is called a low-barrier triage shelter allowing residents to bring with them their partners, belongings, and possibly even their pets. It would be similar to the Railroad Driver shelter which opened a little over one year ago on the north side of the city.

The City plans to loan $13 million to Mercy for the purchase of the hotel from the Innovation and Growth Fund, which contains tax dollars that previously would have been used by the redevelopment agency before the state ended such redevelopment programs. Mercy will be expected to repay the city loan after completing the financing for future renovations of the building.

Money to operate the shelter will come from $16 million in one-time Measure U funds set aside by the City Council earlier this year to deal with the problem of homelessness.

After a year of use as a low-barrier shelter the hotel would likely be renovated and turned into a permanent supportive housing facility, according to Mercy Housing.


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