Metro counties have spent roughly $5 million to rent hotel rooms as emergency shelters to protect the homeless and other vulnerable people from the spread of COVID-19.
Contracts and invoices obtained through public records requests show a county-by-county patchwork of efforts to find and pay for lodging, transportation, food and other services for hundreds of unsheltered people in the seven-county metro, all within a matter of weeks.
"This crisis has ignited an urgency in why individuals should not be living in congregate settings," said Chris Michels, director of housing stability and opportunity for Catholic Charities. "It has been a whirlwind."
County officials, too, say the scale and speed of the emergency sheltering effort is unlike any in recent memory.
"It's really been unprecedented," said Dan Rogan, assistant Hennepin County administrator. The county is "not traditionally in the hotel business, and we now find ourselves in that."
With no clear end to the pandemic in sight — and the need for shelter only expected to grow — county officials are trying to balance the need to protect vulnerable residents from a highly contagious disease against the limits of using public money for costly temporary housing.
"It's important for us to house these households and keep them safe," said Sarah Tripple, planning and programming manager for the Washington County Community Services Department. "It is definitely a more expensive model, and so I think we're kind of having constant conversations about how do we protect our residents and also be fiscally responsive to our other residents as well."
In Washington County, like other metro counties, the demand for hotel rooms has grown substantially during the pandemic. Washington County had about 20 hotel rooms booked last week, compared to about four per month before COVID-19.