Project Roomkey Update: Nearly 4000 Permanent Housing Placements

For two years, Project Roomkey (PRK) has given more than 10,000 unhoused Angelenos a safe place to call home during the COVID-19.

Over that time, PRK utilized dozens of hotels and motels to provide thousands of rooms to support Project Roomkey’s life-saving mission. As of right now, the program consists of seven sites with 1,265 rooms.

One of LAHSA’s goals with Project Roomkey was to move as many people as possible into permanent housing while limiting the number of people who return to the streets. As of January 25, LAHSA and its partners have made nearly 4,000 permanent housing placements and nearly 3,500 interim housing placements out of Project Roomkey.

In accordance with our partners at the city and county, LAHSA has slowly begun ramping down Project Roomkey. As a Project Roomkey site nears its end date, LAHSA works with the site operator, housing providers, and other key partners to ensure that we maximize the number of placements from PRK to permanent housing.

The transition process begins six to eight weeks prior to the closing date. During this period, LAHSA and its partners work to ensure the participants have all the necessary documentation and paperwork necessary to secure permanent housing. If a participant cannot be moved to permanent housing during the transition period, they are offered an interim housing placement until they find a permanent home.

To date, we have ramped down 33 PRK sites. We’ve placed 35% of participants who were part of the transition process into permanent housing, while 3.5% have left PRK for an unknown destination.

We have created new processes and partnerships — such as PRK to Home — to ensure that we are maximizing our resources to end homelessness for as many Project Roomkey participants as possible.

PRK to Home was developed in partnership with a technical assistant from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to place a higher percentage of Project Roomkey participants into permanent housing.

The effort is marked by trainings on engagement, daily huddles, onsite presence, use of Residential Property Support Services, and housing fairs.

As a result of the program, the most recent site to come offline has had the best outcomes to date:

• Permanent housing: 48.61%
• Interim Housing: 41.67%