Glenn College Colloquium: From Hotels to Housing: A Viable Strategy for Addressing Homelessness?

Acquisition and conversion of commercial properties, including hotels and motels, has long been used as a strategy for expanding the supply of affordable housing. During the COVID-19 pandemic, however, unprecedented federal and state resources coupled with the decline in the tourism industry have enabled hotel/motel conversions on a broader scale. States like California and Oregon have established local programs that dramatically expand funding to use this model to provide housing for people experiencing homelessness, eclipsing past investments in building new, permanent supportive housing.

In this presentation, I will discuss findings from two in-depth, qualitative research projects that study the benefits and challenges of using hotel conversions to expand the supply of interim and permanent supportive housing. The research highlights how these new funding streams represent real innovations in how we fund and build affordable housing, and the ways in which jurisdictions are creatively using these programs to rapidly and cost effectively expand the number of units for people experiencing homelessness. But the research also reveals how this strategy runs up against implementation challenges, including fragmented homelessness response systems, unequal political power at the local level, murky lines of public and private sector responsibility, and a shortage of long-term operating resources to ensure project sustainability and positive resident outcomes.

Speaker Bio: Carolina K. Reid is the I. Donald Terner Distinguished Professor in Affordable Housing and Urban Policy in the Department of City and Regional Planning at the University of California at Berkeley. As the Faculty Research Advisor for the Terner Center for Housing Innovation, she assists with the design and execution of the Center’s research agenda and portfolio. Carolina specializes in housing and community development, with a specific focus on access to credit, housing and mortgage markets, urban poverty, and racial inequality. Her current research projects include an assessment of strategies to address homelessness in California, the role that subsidized housing plays in promoting economic mobility among low-income families, and the impact of discrimination in mortgage lending on the racial wealth gap. Before joining the faculty at UC Berkeley, Carolina worked at the Center for Responsible Lending and at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. She has a BA from Stanford University and an MA and PhD from the University of Washington, Seattle.

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