Less than a week after a proposal to house the homeless at a boutique hotel withered under intense public opposition, officials moved forward Friday with a plan to use the Orange County fairgrounds as a location for temporary housing and potential emergency medical facilities amid the coronavirus pandemic.
The 150-acre site in Costa Mesa will receive 10 trailers Friday afternoon that fairgrounds officials say will assist with housing for unsheltered residents who may have risk factors that make them vulnerable to COVID-19, the respiratory illness caused by the coronavirus.
“Fairgrounds all over the state are being called into service to assist their communities, and we are happy to do our part in helping Orange County through this pandemic,” Michele Richards, chief executive of OC Fair & Event Center, said in a statement.
The trailers are arriving from Santa Ana, where the state previously allocated 39 of the structures. Santa Ana will keep 22 to isolate homeless people from the local shelter who develop symptoms or test positive for COVID-19 and will return the remaining 17 trailers to the county to distribute to other locations.
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