When Los Angeles city and county officials reached out to local hotels, hoping to lease rooms through a new program meant to help homeless people survive the COVID-19 pandemic, they ran into a host of concerns.
One downtown hotel was worried about how participating in the program, Project Roomkey, would affect its brand, according to a report issued this week by a city analyst.
Several hotels said they were already housing medical workers, police officers or both. And one was prepared to participate until a company, one that made up a major portion of its business, threatened to pull out of the hotel if homeless people moved in, according to the two-page report.
The report, prepared by the city’s chief legislative analyst and based on information provided by negotiators for Los Angeles County and Mayor Eric Garcetti, sheds light on some of the challenges encountered by government officials as they tried to secure rooms for Project Roomkey, a program meant to help medically vulnerable people living on the streets during the pandemic.
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