'We are going to have a gap': Future unclear for county's homeless under Project Roomkey

Editor's note: This story was updated to reflect new numbers released by the county.

Charles Szabo smiled as he remembered the day one year ago when he saw the modest Oxnard motel room that he and his wife, Myrna Szabo, would come to call home.

“Walking into the room for the first time was a dream come true,” he said, sitting on a picnic bench outside his front door on a recent afternoon. “The year went fast.”

The couple, both disabled and in their early 60s, became homeless in 2018.

First they lived out of their cars, then briefly slept on the streets until last October when the pair found a place to stay through Project Roomkey, a pandemic-era program that used federal emergency funds to provide motel rooms to those most vulnerable to COVID-19, including seniors and those with disabilities.

Clock ticking

Time is running out for Project Roomkey.

The state of California launched the program on an emergency basis in spring 2020 to provide shelter to people experiencing homelessness. The goal: to protect human life and minimize strain on the hospital system during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Project Roomkey began without an end date and has been continued through six-month extensions for 2 ½ years.

Now, with the urgency around COVID-19 declining and developments in vaccines and treatments, Ventura County officials expect the Federal Emergency Management Agency funds to dry up by the end of the year. State money will keep the doors open until February.

The program, which currently houses around 300 people at four sites across Ventura, Oxnard and Thousand Oaks, has cost around $19.2 million to operate since spring 2020.

Jenn Harkey, director of the Ventura County Continuum of Care, which coordinates homeless services and administers Project Roomkey, said the agency will ask the county to foot the $600,000-a-month bill on a temporary basis while they implement a longer-term plan.

Part of that plan includes converting existing county buildings into housing or recuperative care with funds from Project Homekey, the state’s follow-up initiative to convert motels and other existing structures into housing for the homeless.

Five projects in Ventura County have been awarded Homekey funding, and Harkey said the county executive office will soon request bids from developers to convert two county buildings – one off Rose Avenue in Oxnard and the other off Knoll Drive in Ventura – into permanent housing.

“We’ve got to get creative here,” she said.

Pathway to housing

When Gov. Gavin Newsom launched Project Roomkey in 2020, the National Alliance to End Homelessness applauded the move, calling it a "national example."

But what has been the program's local impact?

Since April 2020, over 800 people have participated in Ventura County's Project Roomkey. Of those:

• 194 found permanent housing through options like housing voucher and short-term rental assistance programs

• 176 found temporary housing, like sober living and veterans programs or staying with family and friends.

• 72 clients went to permanent shelters

• 42 returned to living on the streets or in cars

• 16 died, including one overdose.

County data show 74% of the 500 Project Roomkey clients exited the program to some type of housing or shelter and 39% of clients who exited left because they found permanent housing. One-quarter of those who exited Roomkey into temporary housing ultimately found a permanent home.

Roomkey was intended as a pathway to permanent housing, according to the California Department of Social Services. That is leading the state to invest $3.75 billion in Project Homekey's 200 projects that will convert motels and other buildings into 12,500 permanent and interim housing units.

Last month, Newsom announced the latest round of grants, including $27 million for the city of Thousand Oaks’ to convert a Quality Inn into 77 rooms for housing and $5.9 million to build housing for transitional-age youth in the county.

Previous Project Homekey grants have gone to local projects including $4.2 million to build a dozen tiny homes outside Ojai and $1.2 million to rehabilitate apartments in Ventura, $11.5 million to purchase the Vagabond Motel in Oxnard, where the Szabos live, for supportive housing.

That's $49.8 million under Project Homekey just in Ventura County.

“We’ve never had this kind of funding before,” Harkey said. “I don’t know how many times in the last two years I’ve said, 'Finally, homelessness is being recognized as a crisis.'”

Emerging from crisis

For Charles and Myrna Szabo, homelessness was a crisis that lasted four years. In 2018, Charles' self-owned plumbing business failed, then Myrna’s mother, with whom they had been staying, died. The pair lived in their respective cars while Myrna worked as a caregiver for the elderly in Thousand Oaks.

After her husband's car was stolen in 2020, he lived on the streets while Myrna continued to live in her car. The couple would rent motel rooms whenever possible, sometimes spending Charles' entire Social Security check so they could sleep indoors. Holidays, they said, were the worst with nightly rates reaching $180.

The couple's breaking point came in October 2021. Myrna was heading home from work to their shared motel room when a hit-and-run driver crashed into her, totaling her vehicle and leaving the pair to live on the street.

Charles, whose forehead is permanently scarred from one in a series of "three or four" traumatic brain injuries, said they would sometimes sleep on Hueneme Beach.

“I couldn’t close my eyes. I would just stay up to keep an eye out,” Myrna Szabo said.

After a few weeks on the streets, the couple reached out in desperation to Calvary Chapel Oxnard, where they used to attend, and staff connected the Szabos with the Salvation Army. Their Salvation Army case worker got them a spot in Project Roomkey.

“This is something I would never in my life would have expected. It’s wonderful, and I thank God that he sent it to us,” Myrna said. “Everyday we wake up in amazement that we’re here and we’re happy and peaceful.”

The couple is now on waiting lists for a variety of low-income housing options.

“I wish I didn’t have to leave,” Myrna said.

Pros and Cons

When Roomkey first launched in 2020, the county leased entire motels and operated them with on-site case management and supportive services.

That's still the case at the Homekey conversion Vagabond Motel in Oxnard. Mercy House, the homeless assistance nonprofit, operates the site.

But in 2020, the state transitioned from leasing entire motels to using vouchers to rent rooms for $115 a night. That means the county is paying $10 to $20 above the advertised rate for some rooms. It also means the county does not run the sites.

That presents difficulties, Harkey said.

Residents must abide by both motel and program rules. One, known as the “28-day rule,” requires residents to change rooms every four weeks. Roomkey residents have complained that the frequent room changes create a burden for seniors and clients with disabilities or mental health issues as they don’t receive assistance to transport their belongings.

Additionally, social workers aren’t onsite if a client is exhibiting behaviors that require support. Motel staff who lack training with the unique needs of the unhoused are responsible for deciding whether to call a case manager or the police when problems arise.

Harkey said they have also had issues with motel staff who "really are not polite" to clients.

"It has been challenging that we don't have site control," she said.

There are also challenges to exiting the program successfully.

Housing assistance often comes in the form of rent vouchers, which pay below market rate. The county works with the United Way to incentivize landlords to accept the vouchers through perks like double deposits, but high housing costs, delays in obtaining voucher approvals and a rental market with a 2% vacancy rate make it difficult to find willing landlords.

Some clients with housing vouchers have been in Project Roomkey for two years. Of the 152 emergency housing vouchers issued last year in Ventura County as part of a federal aid package, only 20% were used.

Roomkey and Homekey have their critics. The Pacific Research Institute, a Pasadena-based free-market think tank, released a study on the sister-housing initiatives in July pointing to the programs' limited scope and high expense as failures.

Wayne Winegarden, a senior economist at the institute and co-author of the Homekey study, compared it to pouring water on a fire, but only drenching a small portion of the flames.

An estimated 173,800 individuals are unhoused in California, according to the federal government's most recent point-in-time count, but Roomkey was limited to the medically vulnerable and was designed to secure just 15,000 rooms. The first round of $3 billion in Project Homekey funding created 6,000 permanent housing units.

The study notes that the billions poured into Roomkey and Homekey did not stem the rising tide of homelessness. Since 2019, the state's homeless population has grown by nearly 22,500 people, the majority of whom are unsheltered, according to an analysis of federal data by the nonprofit news site CalMatters.

PRI found that California's pandemic-era housing programs "did not really address the overarching crisis of homelessness."

Statewide, about one-fifth of Project Roomkey participants found permanent housing, according to CalMatters.

"Simply put, the initial results from the Project Homekey program are disappointing," the PRI study says. "The state is throwing billions of dollars at the problem but with little to show for it."

Winegarden said the three factors driving homelessness are economics, addiction and mental health.

"It doesn't necessarily matter which one is bigger, we need to have effective responses for all three driving factors," he said.

PRI's criticisms center on the state and federal government's "housing first" approach, which prioritizes providing housing as quickly as possible with the theory that a stable housing situation will serve as a platform from which to address the issues that led to homelessness, like addiction, mental health and employment.

Under this model, housing is decoupled from healthcare services and clients are not required to participate in addiction treatment or mental health services to access housing.

Winegarden said California needs a comprehensive approach that prioritizes treating the root causes of homelessness while also addressing barriers to building affordable housing, including zoning laws, the California Environmental Quality Act and other regulations that suppress housing stock.

But others applaud the housing first model.

According to the National Alliance to End Homelessness, there growing evidence that "housing first is an effective solution to homelessness."

Other studies have shown the program had positive effects, like lowering emergency department use by people experiencing homelessness.

An analysis by UC Berkeley's Terner Center for Housing Innovation found that site operators reported that Project Roomkey "played a critical stabilizing role in people’s lives and facilitated a more successful transition into permanent housing."

That report says Project Roomkey gave service providers a chance to get to know clients and better understand their needs while participants build a track record of stability, showing how transitional housing can lead to long-term housing.

'The human side of things'

Harkey started her career as an emergency medical technician before entering social services. She has seen what homeless services look like on the street. She also knows what it looks like close to home.

The county director has a family member who struggles with homelessness.

“I’ve seen the struggles people are going through on the human side of things,” she said.

Dolores Suafoa, program manager at Mercy House, said she and her staff pay special attention to the human side of things by treating clients with dignity, taking care to reintroduce what she calls "the simplest form of being human."

She said small things, like having three meals a day, a clean room and someone to check on you, transforms clients' perspectives and the choices they make.

"It's like watching a child walk and find themselves," Suafoa said. "They get excited over the simple things, like having your own bathroom. One client said, 'I feel like I'm in Disneyland.' He was so childlike with it."

For Charles Szabo, his choices include staying sober from alcohol for the first time in decades. Szabo quit drinking one year before he entered Project Roomkey, but he said the stable living situation likely contributed to his long-term sobriety.

Suafoa said the shelter that Project Roomkey provides gives people the time they need to process having lost everything, then "getting an opportunity to live again."

She pointed to the Szabos as an example of people who have seized that opportunity.

"Everybody deserves to have a home they can call their own regardless of what life throws at us," Suafoa said.

The Szabos never expected homelessness. Both are the children of immigrants and started working as adolescents. Charles Szabo became a plumber who served 2,000 homes a year. Myrna Szabo worked as a licensed hair stylist until it damaged her neck and shoulders. She later injured her back caring for seniors.

They both worked until their late 50s when they fell on hard times without a safety net.

"It's been rough," Myrna said.

Increased need

Project Roomkey is winding down but homelessness is gearing up. Over the past two years, the homeless population in Ventura County has grown by 25%, increasing to 2,238 people.

Rents have also skyrocketed. The average monthly rent for a one-bedroom apartment in Ventura County is $2,000, according to county data.

“It’s overwhelming at the moment,” Harkey said. “We’ve got a lot of work to do.”

For the county, that means assessing the effectiveness of its current homeless services system. The Ventura County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously Oct. 4 to spend up to $100,000 on a data consultant to work with cities in evaluating and offering recommendations to improve the current system. Once a consultant is hired, the analysis will take six to nine months to complete.

But county officials are racing against the clock as Roomkey winds down.

There is a "tremendous pipeline of housing" coming online in the next year or two, the county's community development director Christy Madden told supervisors at the Oct. 4 meeting, but that's not soon enough to provide options for the 250 who remain in the program at sites not owned by the county.

Unless FEMA extends its funding, "we are going to have a gap," Madden said.

Harkey said short-term solutions while Project Homekey gets underway include promoting shared living arrangements for seniors, many of whom live on fixed incomes of around $1,000 a month.

Myrna Szabo said she and her husband are lucky to have each other.

The couple has seen four neighbors placed into permanent housing since they started living at the Oxnard Vagabond. Every time, Charles Szabo said, it gives them hope that one day they will receive the key to their own apartment.

The Szabos are on a series of waiting lists for low-income housing. Once placed, the future looks secure. In 2021, 97% of clients who were placed into permanent supportive housing remained in stable housing 12 months later, according to county data.

Looking ahead, Charles Szabo said he expects in two years he and his wife will be living in their own apartment with good health, good neighbors and the Vagabond's transformation into housing will be complete.

But for now, Charles said the room at the Vagabond is more than enough because it has a television, a microwave and a comfortable bed big enough for two.

“I’m grateful to be in a safe place, in a place where people care about you and look after you and help you with anything you need,” he said. “It’s beautiful.”

Dawn Megli is an investigative and watchdog reporter for the Ventura County Star. Reach her at dawn.megli@vcstar.com or @ReporterDawn. This story was made possible by a grant from the Ventura County Community Foundation's Fund to Support Local Journalism.

This article originally appeared on Ventura County Star: Federal funding ending for Ventura County COVID-era homeless housing