A homeless shelter in Oakland called Mandela House is closing on May 29. Its purpose was to get unhoused people into permanent housing. But Residents say they haven’t found housing, and now they’re protesting the program’s closure.
Motel shelter programs like Mandela House are touted as a solution to homelessness in California. The model became popular during the coronavirus pandemic, and since 2020 the state has created thousands of units of transitional housing in old motels.
KALW’s homelessness reporter Alastair Boone speaks with Crosscurrent's Hana Baba about why programs like this one have such a hard time moving people inside.
TRANSCRIPT:
Hana Baba: Hey Alastair.
Alastair Boone: Hey Hana.
H: Hey. So tell us about Mandela House.
A: So Mandela House is a transitional housing program in Oakland near the Emeryville border in an old Extended Stay America hotel. And transitional housing is different from normal overnight shelter, so residents can stay for a longer period of time, and at Mandela House, they were given a year.
The idea is that during that time, onsite staff can help them find permanent housing.
H: Mm-hmm. And so there's been lots of these hotels, right, like this one, since the pandemic. How does the Mandela House program work?
A: The city opened the program a year ago with funding from the state's Encampment Resolution Fund.
That's that big pot of money that California cities can apply for to close big homeless encampments.
H: Mm-hmm.
A: Oakland got millions of dollars in state funding to buy the hotel, and for the last year, they've used it to shelter the residents of three longstanding encampments. These were big communities all over the city that closed last year, like one on East 12th Street, one in Mosswood Park, and one downtown.
And these closures, they were a big deal for both the city and for encampment residents, 'cause in some cases, people had been living there for a long time.
H: Okay, so the idea was that folks from these encampments would then move into Mandela House.
A: Yes. Not everyone got a spot at Mandela House, but 136 people moved in I've spoken to one of the current residents, Andrea Vega.
ANDREA: My name is Andrea Vega. When I was 12, my dad lost the property, and I became homeless.
A: She's 27 now, and she had been living at the encampment on East 12th Street for five years when it was closed last May. And she says she lost a lot of her possessions during that closure, so she thought, "Why not? I might as well try out this new program in the hotel."
And I went in a van, and they took me there, and then when I got there, they told me to take the clothes I had on off, and they gave me sweatpants and a T-shirt, and they told me that I would have to shower before I got my room key.
Andrea says she found this pretty uncomfortable or violating even, and it was kind of the beginning of several challenges for her at the motel.
H: Yeah. So did it get better for her?
A: She had a lot of challenges living in the program. She also described mold in her room, and she told me that she had a lot of tension with staff about her employment because she says there are some jobs she really just can't do because she has severe carpal tunnel syndrome.
But she wanted to continue living there because she was eager to get help with finding permanent housing.
ANDREA: They told me that I would go there, and after the, the, like during the process, that they were gonna help me with permanent housing. But then after being there for a little while, I noticed the, the people who worked there were really rude. They haven't helped us do anything really.
H:: Okay, so Alistair, that's the point of view of one of the residents. What do the people running the program say about this?
A: I reached out to the nonprofit that operates Mandela House called Housing Consortium of the East Bay, or HCEB, and they told me that all the residents of Mandela House got support becoming document ready.
H:: What does that mean?
A: So that means that they got help procuring all the documents you need to be able to move into housing, like your ID or your birth certificate. And HCEB says that more than 90% of Mandela House residents are now considered eligible to move into housing. But Andrea says that when she entered the program, she was already document ready, and so she felt frustrated because she says she didn't make any progress with actually finding a housing match.
H: Hmm. Was anyone able to get housed through the Mandela House?
A: Of the 136 initial residents, HCEB told me that 12 people have been housed. They also said that an additional 25 people have housing matches but haven't moved in yet. So that leaves about 100 people unaccounted for.
H: 100 people. Is, is this common? Is this, is this normal?
A: Yeah, it's a lot. But in my reporting, I've learned that these kinds of numbers are normal. When it comes to the state's Encampment Resolution Fund program, I've learned that less than 10% of the people who have received services through that program have actually made it into permanent housing according to state data.
H:: Mm-hmm. Didn't you do a story for Crosscurrents earlier this year about a similar program in Richmond?
A: Yes. Yeah. This is actually a very common story in California, and I learned a lot in my reporting in Richmond about all the different reasons why it's so difficult for these programs to help people successfully transition into permanent housing.
During my reporting for that story, I spoke to Ryan Finnigan, who is the deputy research director at UC Berkeley's Terner Center, which studies housing.
RYAN: The biggest challenge is often just that there's not enough permanent housing
A: He told me that one of the main challenges faced by these programs all over the state is that there just isn't anywhere for their residents to go.
RYAN: The best shelter or transitional housing program in the world can do everything right, and if there's no permanent housing to move to, you're not gonna see exits to permanent housing.
A: He said that to avoid this situation where interim housing programs basically become like housing purgatory, we just need to build more affordable housing.
But he also said that there are some problems within interim housing programs, like the ones Andrea talked about, that make them less effective.
H:: Hmm. Problems like what?
A: Well, for example, they're often understaffed.
RYAN: They're often looking for that one person that has to be able to do it all, and, like, there's just not that many people who can do it all.
A: These motel programs often have short-term funding sources, which means they're operating on shoestring budgets and overburdening their staff with too many responsibilities as a result.
H:: Mm-hmm, and that sounds frustrating for staff and for residents.
A: For sure. So now, here in Oakland, that year of transitional housing at Mandela House is up.
The shelter will close on May 29th, and all the residents have to move out before then.
H: And what options do current residents have?
A: HCEB says that between now and May 29th, they will be working to expedite the process of moving people indoors into permanent housing or transferring them into other interim programs. Andrea was offered a spot in a different transitional housing program.
ANDREA: They had gave me some papers to fill out. It was like a application to a different program.
A: But she's not sure if she's going to go.
ANDREA: I was thinking about it, but the way that things been going, I don't feel like they're gonna help me at all.
H: So she just doesn't trust it. So that's just it?
A: Yeah.
H: Why can't it just stay open until everyone finds housing?
A: So the Mandela House program was always gonna close this May because it's being renovated before it reopens into 125 units of permanent supportive housing. That's the kind that Ryan Finigan says we need more of.
And the idea is that some of the current transitional housing residents will get to move back in there, but that's not open yet.
H: All right. Thanks, Alistair.
A: Thanks, Hana.
