Pandemic-Related Vacant Property Initiatives

II.Temporary Noncongregate Housing to Prevent the Spread of COVID-19 Early in 2020, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued guidelines urging homeless service providers and local officials to reserve socially distanced housing options, like hotels with separate bathrooms for quarantine and protective housing sites, for society's most vulnerable.2 Governors of several states issued executive orders to secure hotel and motel rooms for individuals who lacked options to quarantine or social distance. Berkeley, for example, initially entered into a contract with La Quinta Inn hotels to house the homeless, but the contract was terminated due to the hotel's mounting concerns (hotel management tried to limit access of program participants to certain areas of hotel grounds).7 Alameda County-which encompasses Berkeley, Oakland, and several other East Bay cities-has negotiated successful contracts with local hotels to house the homeless under Project Roomkey.8 Alameda County has implemented two programs under Project Roomkey: Operation Comfort, a temporary quarantining program for individuals who test positive, are experiencing symptoms, or have been exposed to COVID-19; and Operation Safer Ground, a longer-term program to house homeless individuals over the age of sixty-five or who are medically fragile with other health conditions. Foreseeing the need for safe and socially distanced housing long after hotels and local economies reopen for business, the CDC emphasized the importance of homeless service providers and local officials to help the homeless find permanent housing solutions.15 The city of Newark, New Jersey used part of their COVID-19 stimulus package for a program called "Live Newark," which gives lower-income Newark residents a pathway to homeownership.16 Although the majority of COVID housing-related government assistance went towards rent forgiveness, some local governments used COVID funds towards longer-term solutions. III.The Vacant Property in the United States Could House All Its Homeless According to the U.S. Census Bureau's most recent American Community Survey, more than seventeen million vacant housing units exist nationwide.18 Even excluding the vacancies that are up for rent but not yet occupied, up for sale, or are being kept for occasional or seasonal use, there are still 6,168,545 residential units unoccupied.19 Meanwhile, the number of homeless individuals counted in the United States in 2018, the year the vacancy su