This is an opportunity to re-imagine how we deal with homelessness and protect our most vulnerable neighbors in a public health crisis. One possible solution is to purchase unused or unused properties such as hotels and convert them into permanent support accommodation for people with homelessness.
Our organization, Father Bills & MainSpringis in the process of partnering with the State and City of Brockton to purchase a Brockton hotel and convert 69 rooms into efficiency-style apartments. This would reduce the city’s individual protection population by 50 percent.
This is a relatively quick solution that could scale across Massachusetts. State and local governments need to move away from the current system of over-reliance on shelters and house hundreds of people in individual crowded buildings.
Hotels are being converted into efficient apartments be carried out on a larger scale in California, Oregon and Washington. Hotel owners, seeing a sharp drop in travel due to the pandemic, are looking for ways to sell their properties at a time when a population is in dire need of housing.
For the past nine months, the hotel we are buying in Brockton has served as satellite accommodation, providing refuge for more than 60 people per night suffering from homelessness. By converting the hotel, which would otherwise have been empty during the pandemic, our organization was able to depopulate our main building in downtown Brockton, creating space for social distance.
Many guests are older, have a weak immune system or are at high risk for other diseases. The positive COVID-19 rate among our Brockton guests dropped from an initial high of 30 percent to less than 1 percent after they moved into the hotel.
In Quincy, we also work with city officials and use a local hotel to depopulate our main accommodation.
As soon as we have bought the Brockton Hotel, we will install kitchenettes in every room to make them efficient apartments. Case managers offer tenants individual support and help them stay housed and become more self-sufficient. This may include assistance with job security or access to health care and other community resources.
The national “Housing firstApproach works. It prioritizes permanent housing to help individuals and families address the issues that have contributed to their homelessness. At Father Bill’s & MainSpring, we operate more than 550 permanent support housing units. 99 percent of our tenants stay for at least one year and 93 percent for at least three years.
Remodeling existing properties is much easier than developing a new home in an overheated real estate market. For example, it can take three years or more to build, finance and erect a 25-unit building for the homeless. During this time, dozens, if not hundreds, more people in the same community become homeless and enter an already overcrowded and costly protection system.
These conversions were made even easier thanks to the housing code passed by Governor Charlie Baker and the Legislature. The law, which lowers the threshold for changing the zoning rules for new housing, will play an important role in helping communities develop strategies for a post-pandemic environment in which empty commercial properties can be quickly converted into housing.
The efficiency of converting unused real estate into housing is a cornerstone as well as a proactive and cost effective approach to health care. A recent study by Blue Cross Massachusetts Foundation Blue Shield found that MassHealth, the state-administered Medicaid program, spent less on formerly homeless people in supportive homes than on those living in shelters and on the streets.
Turning hotels into residential buildings because it’s inexpensive, quick to move, and leads to better healthcare outcomes. However, in order for the state to do this more widely and to help our most vulnerable neighbors, it needs political benevolence and support from local communities, as well as funding and support from the private and public sectors.
In times of crisis, those who suffer the least suffer the least. COVID-19 is no different. However, we hope that this crisis can be a turning point in our fight against homelessness.
John Yazwinski is President and CEO of Father Bill’s & MainSpring.
