CHICAGO—In early April, Wayne Smith was the second person to move into Hotel 166, a haven set up to protect the most vulnerable in city homeless shelters from the ravages of the coronavirus.
The 58-year-old might be one of the last to move out when the hotel wraps up its mission on Labor Day. The goal now is to get permanent housing for its nearly 100 remaining residents. Despite having a housing voucher worth $1,100 a month for an apartment in suburban Cook County, Mr. Smith has been unable to find one because his credit score is too low.
Cities like Chicago that moved homeless people out of crowded shelters due to the coronavirus are now struggling with how to get those people into permanent housing. They are coming up against the same challenges homeless people have long-faced: criminal histories, mental illness and the wherewithal to stick through lengthy application processes that can require extensive documentation.
Now, case workers at the hotel, set up by the city with federal funds earmarked for coronavirus aid, are trying to get Mr. Smith into another program, but say they might be running out of time.
“I’m no closer to finding a place than I was four months ago,” said Mr. Smith, who has been in the hotel since April 2 and recently went back to work assembling meals at a meal-kit company. “All I can do is pray.”
In the spring as the virus spread, cities rushed to revamp large shelters that were emerging as hotbeds of infection. Homeless people often were sleeping in cavernous rooms filled with bunks stacked three high and using communal bathrooms. Many shelters have since thinned out their populations and created ways to allow social distancing.
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Some cities turned to hotels—which often had empty rooms as people traveled less—as a temporary solution, said Steve Berg, vice president for programs and policy at the National Alliance to End Homelessness. Now, they are looking for permanent answers. There are also concerns about a wave of new people being forced out of their apartments after losing jobs to coronavirus-related shutdowns.
Last week, California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced that $600 million—mostly federal coronavirus aid money—would be available in grants to localities interested in purchasing hotels and converting them into apartments. In Connecticut, where about 1,200 homeless people were in hotels, the state in June said it planned to find homes for 1,800 by fall, using $15 million in federal stimulus aid. The state has since found apartments for 422 families, a housing department spokesman said.
Some cities, including New York and San Francisco, are seeing a surge of homeless people on the street, as shelters have been thinned and some homeless people fear going back to them because of the coronavirus.
Overall, homelessness has been reduced over the past 15 years, Mr. Berg said, and the coronavirus has actually galvanized support for tackling the issue. Mr. Berg estimates that providing rental assistance to everyone who qualifies in the U.S. would cost about $40 billion to $50 billion, around 6% of what was spent on Medicare in 2019.
“This is not at all an unsolvable problem,” he said.
In Chicago, Mr. Smith is among 259 people who have stayed at the former boutique hotel, just steps from the fancy shops on Michigan Avenue.
Lynn René Wilson, a former nurse, is a resident of Hotel 166. She is waiting to move into a new apartment.
Photo: Joshua Lott for The Wall Street JournalThomas Huggett of Lawndale Christian Health Center, who runs the medical staff at the hotel and has stayed there every night except for three since early April, plucked most of them from city shelters. A combination of their age and underlying medical conditions made them susceptible to severe cases of Covid-19. At the hotel, guests received three meals a day, help with all their medical conditions and Covid-19 tests every three to four weeks.
Dr. Huggett says getting the residents into safe housing is critical to keeping them healthy with the virus still active in the city.
“The reason we set up the hotel in the first place was to save lives,” he said, as well as to preserve costly and scarce resources such as ventilators and ICU beds. “If we just shut down the hotel today, they would be back in the shelters and vulnerable once again.”
But finding housing has proved a challenge, even with a dedicated team working to secure birth certificates, social-security cards, proof of benefits and other documentation. The team also works with dozens of potential landlords, who each have their own application and screening process, some requiring submissions by fax, some by email, others by hand.
“Seeing how difficult it’s been even for our staff to negotiate this whole system gave us an appreciation for how hard it is for the homeless person on their own to do all this,” said Kelly Ross, a housing coordinator for Lawndale, who works at the hotel.
At its peak, the hotel had 172 guests. Some were discharged to hospitals, psychiatric wards or treatment programs. One woman this week boarded a bus for Georgia to stay with family.
Most of the 95 remaining have enrolled in a rapid rehousing program arranged and overseen by a nonprofit called All Chicago that coordinates Chicago’s collective response to homelessness. The group is using $15 million in coronavirus relief funding to find homes for 1,250 households, said Beth Horwitz, vice president of strategy and innovation at All Chicago.
“The unfortunate reality is that by and large we are working at far too small a scale,” she said.
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- Eviction Looms for Millions of Americans Who Can’t Afford Rent (July 16)
- New York City’s Homeless Population Has High Covid-19 Mortality Rate (June 9)
- San Francisco Leaders Clash Over Hotel Rooms for Homeless Population (May 5)
- New York’s MTA Aims to Tackle Subway Homeless Problem Amid Coronavirus (April 28)
Lynn René Wilson was living in a shelter with 50 other women in the same room in May—including two who had Covid-19 in nearby beds—when she had a chance to move into the hotel.
She was more than eager to go when Dr. Huggett came to pick her and others up at the shelter. “He said, ‘I want you ready by 1 o’clock.’ I was ready by 12,” said Ms. Wilson with a chuckle. She is 62 years old and uses a walker to get around because of her cerebral palsy.
Ms. Wilson, a former nurse and jokester, has been matched to move into a new apartment, but there are still hurdles. On Wednesday, a Lawndale staffer took her and several others to pick up her birth certificate.
She still has to wait about two more weeks for final paperwork to go through before she can move into her new apartment, as long as someone doesn’t snatch it up in the meantime, said Ms. Ross, the housing coordinator.
Harold Baughns, 59, has had better luck.
Earlier this week, Mr. Baughns, who has struggled with addiction and worked for years at a dry cleaner, carried a box of dishes he had bought on the street and set it on the counter of his spotless new apartment, after signing the lease and getting his own keys.
“It’s beautiful, beautiful,” said Mr. Baughns, who is built like a boxer and loves to do push-ups. He is especially happy with his big new refrigerator, which he plans to stock as soon as he moves in full time. “I love to cook,” he said.
Write to Joe Barrett at joseph.barrett@wsj.com
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