The city of Tucson plans to purchase the Knights Inn Hotel on South Cracroft Road and turn it into a haven for displaced families, officials said.
The city plans to move operations of the shelter at the Comfort Suites on South Tucson Boulevard to the Knights Inn if the deal goes through. The hotel is part of the Wildcat Inn and Nortel Motel on North Oracle Road and Desert Cove Country Club on West Ankrum Road as buildings purchased by the city over the past year and a half. It will join what is now operated as a temporary shelter.
Dan Sullivan, director of the Pima County Community and Workforce Development Authority, said moving the shelter from Pima County-rented Comfort Suites to the city-owned Knights Inn would save government and taxpayers money. Stated. The county and city are cooperating in funding and running the shelter and will continue to do so.
Since January 2022, the Comfort Suites operation has been Tucson’s only government-backed shelter, designed for families facing eviction who aren’t fit for traditional shelters, Sullivan said. It is said that This is a non-collective shelter, meaning residents have their own private living space rather than communal rooms.
“This will ensure families and children facing eviction or who have been displaced are not left homeless on the streets or forced into mass shelters,” Sullivan said. Told. “The aim is to stabilize the people there, ensure a safe and dignified place for their families to live, and eventually move them into permanent housing.”
in Pima County Emergency Eviction Legal Services This program is designed to provide legal advice and representation to households facing eviction. If evictions cannot be prevented, shelters provide a safety net that keeps households from living on the streets and “getting them back on the road to independent permanent housing,” Sullivan said.
Ninety percent of sheltered households transition to permanent housing, which could mean Section 8 housing, another subsidized housing program, or unsubsidized rentals, Sullivan said.
Since its inception, Comfort Suites has provided shelter to 279 households or 825 people, including 373 children, according to data provided by the office of county administrator Jean Lescher.
Pima County Courthouse issued There were 2,345 evictions from January to July last year, and 2,318 in the entire 12 months of 2021. The federal moratorium on evictions expired at the end of July 2021.
The Knights Inn will be purchased using a $2.7 million award from the Arizona Department of Housing and an additional $1.6 million in city and county consortium funds from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Lescher said last Friday. told the oversight board in a memo. .
“We are dramatically increasing both shelter capacity and long-term housing capacity,” said Jason Thorpe, interim deputy director of the city’s Housing and Community Development Authority.
The Nortel Motel will soon become Milagro on Oracle, a 63-unit affordable housing project for seniors, located in the city on West Miracle Mile, as The Sentinel previously reported. There are plans to turn the Amazon Motel into a low-barrier homeless shelter. this month.
While the city has focused on hotel shelters in recent years, Thorpe said there are plans to renovate existing properties to add 100 beds to the collective shelter environment.
Pima County’s homeless population has increased 60% over the past five years, with about 2,200 people living outdoors, in shelters or in temporary housing, according to January figures.
Sixty-eight percent of the county’s homeless population has no shelter, and on any given night, 1,500 people live outdoors rather than in shelters or temporary housing. 300 percent increase Has been unprotected and homeless since 2018.
“Our real goal is to find solutions to reduce unprotected homelessness,” Thorpe said.
