This week’s winter weather has delayed the process of relocating about 160 homeless people who have lived in hotel rooms the city rented during the coronavirus pandemic, a spokesman for Mayor Jim Kenney’s administration said Wednesday.
The Holiday Inn Express and Fairfield Inn in Center City were used as temporary housing for homeless people at risk of contracting COVID-19 to keep them in a non-congregate setting seen as safer than a shelter.
Since the coronavirus prevention sites opened in the spring, they reached the number of 260 residents, and were down to 160 on Monday, deputy managing director Eva Gladstein told reporters in a news conference.
She said the move-outs were to long-term housing that the city arranged or helped them secure with other agencies. The city helps them get transportation to the new unit, furniture and a TV for the new place.
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A group of housing advocates who worked on the homeless encampment protests said that some hotel residents chose to leave after receiving a letter from a city official saying the hotels would close Tuesday, Dec. 15.
Severe weather complications
The city later said that the move-outs would be spread out over a week and a half and complicated by the severe weather.
If someone’s long-term housing is not ready, Liz Hersh, director of the city’s homeless services, and the mayor’s spokesman said hotel residents will be moved to two new coronavirus prevention sites, or to a slate of more than 100 single-occupancy rooms in other locations.
“Mostly people will be in their own rooms. Some of the rooms are very very large, so they can accommodate 2 people with 10-12 feet in between them,” Hersh said Monday.
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