Key to Helping the Homeless

Salinas’ Good Nite Inn was a 1990s-era motel on the corner of Work and John streets. Today, the building is an example of a new program called Homekey, which aims to get homeless people off the streets. Pam Marino of Monterey County Weekly describes how the fast-tracked Homekey program was born out of the so-called “Roomkey” program of April 2020, which sought emergency hotel rooms for the homeless. Marino writes that this new Salinas Homekey development, one of 120 developments statewide, went from concept to move-in-ready in five months—a process that would usually take years.

Financed with $8 million in state taxes and $56 in philanthropy, the state program is due for expansion. Financing aside, the challenges to come involve coordinating charitable groups, working around the resistance of NIMBY neighborhoods, and coping with the problems of homeless people trying to readjust to a life indoors.

Read more: “An unprecedented state program is already fulfilling its promise to house the most vulnerable.”