Pandemic housing initiatives repurposed to shelter those displaced by extreme weather

Some pandemic-era strategies are proving to be useful in supporting residents impacted by other disasters such as extreme weather events. In response to the pandemic, states rented or bought hotels to provide places for unhoused people and other vulnerable residents to quarantine safely. These pandemic initiatives demonstrated that adapting hotels and motels is an easier, cheaper, and faster alternative than retrofitting other types of buildings, like offices, or building new structures from scratch. Now some wildfire-prone states such as Oregon and California are using hotels to shelter people who have lost their houses to fires. Aside from providing emergency shelter, these states are also converting some units into transitional and permanent affordable housing to meet community needs.