California homeless quarantine in hotels, more rooms needed

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Anxiety mounted every time someone at the homeless shelter sneezed or residents got too close. For Matthew Padilla, a 34-year-old with a pacemaker and asthma, catching the novel coronavirus would likely mean death.

So he jumped at the chance to move into a hotel room for free as part of a new California program. Within days, he and his husband, Nito, were in a room near Los Angeles' Koreatown, where meals are delivered along with health screenings.

“At the shelter I was constantly getting up, checking on him,” said Nito Padilla, 36. “And here I know he’s safe. I know he’s OK.”

The Padillas are among roughly 7,000 people in California who have been moved out of shelters, vehicles and rough streets to ride out the pandemic in hotels, an effort Gov. Gavin Newsom announced in March to shield some of the state's 150,000 estimated vulnerable homeless.

Newsom has praised the progress, although counties are still struggling to acquire rooms and squabbles have developed in some cities. Local officials say the process has been complicated as they find appropriate hotels, negotiate leases and get staffing in place. It’s something counties have never done at this scale.

New York City has also tried to decompress its shelters, which typically hold more than 57,000 people, by sending homeless people into hotels and other temporary lodging. But only about 3,500 typically live on the streets there, compared to tens of thousands in California's largest cities.

Some homeless advocates in California say officials should be working much more quickly given the fast-moving pandemic. In San Francisco, which has moved more than 1,000 of its estimated 8,000 homeless into hotels, nonprofits raised money to get rooms for some who couldn't get them. Activists...