DATE: December 8, 2020
TO: Mayor and City Council
FROM: Deputy City Manager
SUBJECT
Temporary Hayward Navigation Center Hotel Annex Project: Adopt a Resolution Authorizing the City Manager to Take Emergency Actions Consistent with the City of Hayward’s Shelter Crisis Declaration to Implement the Temporary Hayward Navigation Center Hotel Annex Project to House Vulnerable Homeless Individuals by Allocating $1.21 Million in Existing Funds, Appropriating and Allocating Up to $90,000 in Anticipated State Grant Funds, and Entering into Relevant Agreements
RECOMMENDATION
That Council adopts a resolution (Attachment II) authorizing the City Manager to take emergency actions consistent with the City’s shelter crisis declaration to implement a temporary Hayward Navigation Center Hotel Annex project to house vulnerable homeless individuals by allocating $1.21 million in existing funds, appropriating and allocating up to $90,000 in anticipated State grant funds, and entering into relevant agreements.End
SUMMARY
Homelessness is a growing regional and statewide crisis, with homelessness in Hayward increasing 23% from 2017 to 2019. Due to this statewide crisis, on October 2, 2018, the City Council declared a shelter crisis in the City of Hayward and, on January 22, 2019, extended this declaration through June 2021. Through this shelter crisis declaration, the City Council found that the health and safety of the City’s growing homeless population is threatened by a lack of shelter and authorized the City Manager to take emergency action to implement the Navigation Center, which opened in November 2019.
While City Council has long identified homelessness, housing affordability, and eviction prevention as key concerns in the community and have supported local efforts and projects to address these issues, the global COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated these issues and created a more acute need for increased homelessness response and intervention, particularly for individuals with increased vulnerabilities.
As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak, many individuals and families have experienced or will experience sudden income loss, leaving them vulnerable to eviction and homelessness, with some estimates predicting a 40-45% increase in homelessness nationwide due to the economic impacts of COVID-19. The pandemic has impacted City activities intended to address homelessness as well, including causing an intentional reduction of capacity in the City’s Hayward Navigation Center (HNC). Additionally, Alameda County’s hotel programs designed to serve homeless individuals (Safer Ground) will be closed by January 2021, leaving this population vulnerable.
With the reduced capacity of the City’s Navigation Center and closure of County-wide hotel beds for vulnerable individuals experiencing homelessness, staff recommends that the Council authorize the City Manager to take emergency actions to implement the Hayward Navigation Center Hotel Annex Project (HNC Hotel Annex), a new project that expands shelter beds in the City by leasing unoccupied hotel rooms from a preferred hotel for up to 35 homeless individuals for six months and provides supportive and housing placement services to those individuals through a social services contract. Like the HNC, the HNC Hotel Annex is designed to be temporary shelter with an intentional focus and resource allocation to support successful exit to permanent housing. Staff will work with BACS to integrate exit planning into the program design so as not to set up a program model where individuals exit back to homelessness.at the end of the six-month period.
The HNC Hotel Annex project will cost no more than $1.3 million, which will be paid for almost entirely through existing funding realized through contract savings from the Navigation Center, as well as up to $90,000 in anticipated State grant funds.
ATTACHMENTS
Attachment I Staff Report
Attachment II Resolution