L.A. is converting 'nuisance' motels into 500 apartments for homeless vets

PICO RIVERA, CA JANUARY 05, 2016 --- Workers from Los Angeles homeless services department emergency response team, right three, meet people living under Freeway 5 bridge along San Gabriel River in Pico Rivera January 5, 2016. LAHSA team and Los Angeles sheriff deputies went out to homeless encampments along river to warn people about the danger of flooding and to provide them information of nearby shelters. (Photo by Irfan Khan /Los Angeles Times via Getty Images) less PICO RIVERA, CA JANUARY 05, 2016 --- Workers from Los Angeles homeless services department emergency response team, right three, meet people living under Freeway 5 bridge along San Gabriel River in Pico Rivera ... more Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close L.A. is converting 'nuisance' motels into 500 apartments for homeless vets 1 / 1 Back to Gallery

Los Angeles has just embarked on a plan that if successful, will take 500 military vets off the streets of the city.

The L.A. Times is reporting that the city has just reached a deal for private and non-profit housing developers to purchase what they're calling "nuisance" underutilized and oftentimes run-down motels and convert them into hundreds of efficiency studio flats. The rents for these studios will be paid for using vouchers from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and Proposition 41, which allocated $600 million in bond money to help fund out-of-work, struggling, and homeless vets.

The conversion of new units is already in progress; just last week, the city of Los Angeles gave 400 rent unit vouchers to a construction company called Shang-ri La Industries, which now has 60 days to find sites to renovate. A second organization, nonprofit affordable housing group Volunteers of America, is also planning to convert 100 more units in Hollywood.

"Instead of allowing blighted properties to decay, let's use them to make powerful change in our communities by giving our veterans the access to services and housing that they need and deserve," Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said in a written statement published by the L.A. Times.

In 2015, San Francisco was estimated to have one of the highest concentrations of homeless veterans in the United States. In 2013, the city found that 1,267 vets were homeless, with more than 500 of them living as "chronically" homeless, which is defined as when a "person with a disability has lived without a permanent home for a year or more."

Still, things in major California cities have slowly improved over the last few years. San Francisco and surrounding cities like Santa Rosa have adopted similar plans, but nothing to the extent of what Los Angeles is hoping to accomplish.

"Veterans in the last five years [in San Francisco], compared to other homeless subpopulations, have received a great deal of resources," Leon Winston, chief operating officer at veteran-assisting San Francisco organization Swords to Plowshares told KQED this month. "It's been a bit of an embarrassment of riches."

Nevertheless, there's still a ways to go. Could Los Angeles' plan be a viable solution in San Francisco, too?