Supervisors approve purchase of 2 Redwood City hotels to house homeless

in Community

The San Mateo County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday approved the purchase of two Redwood City hotels, one of which will be converted into permanent housing for seniors with extremely low incomes and the other into temporary housing for people experiencing homelessness.

The 95 rooms at TownePlace Suites at 1000 Twin Dolphin Drive will be used for senior housing and the 74-room Pacific Inn Hotel at 2610 El Camino Real will be used as temporary shelter for the homeless, County officials said.

The purchase of both hotels is being funded from the state’s Project Homekey initiative, an evolution of Project Roomkey, which uses hotels to provide temporary housing for the homeless in order to protect them during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The purchase price for TownePlace Suites is $29.25 million, while the price for the Pacific Inn is $21.5 million.

The state will help with both of those purchases with an award of $33 million in Project Homekey funding.