Miami-Dade is moving elderly residents out of homeless shelters and into hotels

With Florida’s tourism industry paralyzed during the coronavirus pandemic, Miami-Dade is securing hundreds of hotel rooms to ease crowding at homeless shelters and also give healthcare workers a place to sleep between shifts.

Ronald Book, chairman of the board that oversees Miami-Dade’s homeless agency, said the county may move more than 150 older residents from residential facilities across Miami-Dade. Already, nearly 50 are being moved out of the Chapman centers in Miami and Homestead as a precaution against spread in those two county-funded facilities.

He said a staffer at the Miami Chapman center tested positive for COVID-19, raising the alarm of an outbreak there. Book said the aim is to move all elderly people out of homeless facilities across the county, as well as people in that age group living without shelter.

“If you don’t move on a dime, you risk broader spread and the potential for deep loss of life,” said Book, chairman of the Homeless Trust, which oversees funding of nonprofits that assist people experiencing homelessness across Miami-Dade.

Frank Rollason, director of emergency management for Miami-Dade County, said the county is preparing to sign long-term agreements for 300 rooms at the Red Roof Inn and the Doral Inn and Suites near Miami International Airport for month-long agreements to shelter people without homes, first responders and ICU nurses during the coronavirus crisis.

Representatives of the two hotels were not available for interviews Thursday.

The bulk hotel reservations are part of a broad effort by Miami-Dade to tackle a wide range of housing issues during the fight to slow the spread of COVID-19. Rollason said the effort could expand to seven hotels eventually, and the rooms would form an unprecedented stock of temporary lodging managed by the county.

“In our mind we’re saying we need to hold onto these for three months,” Rollason said of the hotel agreements.

Governments across the country are turning to hotels to provide lodging for homeless populations, healthcare workers and public-safety employees at high risk of exposure from COVID-19. Chicago is spending $2 million a month to rent a pair of hotels to provide quarantine shelter for people at risk of spreading coronavirus. In Miami, the city is providing 300 apartments to healthcare workers donated by the José Milton family and United Property Management.

Miami-Dade is getting the rooms at a deep discount that Rollason described as “pennies on the dollar.” Some rooms are being secured for as little as $35 a night. But with the tourism shutdown and county emergency rules limiting hotel stays to front-line workers and stranded travelers, the lodging business is eager for the steady stream of cash a local government provides.

And while some hotels initially balked at being temporary housing for COVID-19 patients, those concerns are fading as the lodging industry settles in to a historic downturn.

“There was a little bit of reluctance early on,” said Gregory Rumpel, a managing director at Jones Lang LaSalle commercial real estate firm, who specializes in the hotel industry. Now there’s “a shift toward: Let’s see what we can do to help out.”

People experiencing homelessness are the main focus of Miami-Dade’s first bulk hotel reservation.

Homeless shelters risk widespread outbreaks when a single resident becomes infected in open, barracks-style sleeping quarters, so hotel rooms are a way to provide isolation.

“If you leave them in that condition, you run the chance of it running through there like a nursing home,” Rollason said.

Rollason said the 200 rooms at the Red Roof Inn, which will cost $210,000 every 30 days, will be managed in cooperation with the Homeless Trust. He said the 100 rooms at the Doral Inn & Suites, which will cost $117,600 every 30 days, will be set aside to house first responders and healthcare professionals worried about bringing COVID-19 home to their families.

“We’re making sure we account for all these rooms. We had to buy the whole place,” Rollason said.

“We were just on the phone this morning,” Rollason said, opening the agreements while speaking to the Miami Herald to check the value of the contracts. “The deal should be inked today. The owners have already signed. Now the county has got to sign.”

Rollason said both hotels still have guests that need to checked out before the county can move people in. The Doral Inn needs 48 hours, he said. The Red Red Roof Inn needs 24 hours.

Miami-Dade’s rooms also could be used to free up hospital beds should a crush of COVID-19 cases overwhelm hospitals. The extra housing could let patients who would otherwise recuperate at a hospital instead be monitored at hotels.

Rollason said the county has looked at renting seven hotels with more than 800 rooms in all if housing needs soar during the pandemic.

“It’s for a surge,” he said in an interview last week. “We’re the pessimists.”

Miami-Dade’s network of homeless providers regularly uses long-term hotel rooms when shelters are otherwise full, or families need places to live in isolation. The coronavirus has brought a spree of hotel-room renting as the agency races to prevent people with COVID-19 symptoms and confirmed diagnoses from infecting others.

Book said the Trust also has agreements with an assisted living facility in North Miami with rooms for more than 60 people, where the Trust is paying about $55 a night per room. The Trust also has 15 rooms at a hotel in Overtown, at a rate of $76 per night.

He said the Trust plans to submit for reimbursement of all its costs to the federal government. He’s also pushing the state Division of Emergency Management to provide swabs so that the Trust can conduct more frequent testing.

“I’ve got 470 ... damn employees that have got to be tested. They’re in daily contact with the population. They’ve got to be tested,” he said. “And we’ve got an inordinate number of senior citizens that are unsheltered.”

This story was originally published April 9, 2020 at 4:48 PM.