There is an estimated 1,000 families living in motels in Orange County, California.
http://crooksandliars.com/...
Businesses are failing, companies are cutting workers, homeowners are losing their homes to foreclosure. Before thousands of Americans lose their sense of place, before children are ripped away from what is familiar and safe, let's open the schools in the evenings as homeless shelters. School sites are regularly used for temporary housing for families that are fleeing fire in California; properly organized, they can provide a safe harbor for families that might otherwise have unsuitable options.
More below.
Shelters would be open after the school day, so don't worry about that.
A typical California high school has facilities that could be used after the school day by families. There are restrooms, showers, cafeteria facilities (most are not fully equipped to make food, however; they are dispensaries for prepackaged foods or foods prepared at a centralized location and transported to sites) and many have fencing for overnight security. Schools have offices that could be used for organization and media centers (libraries, old style) for on-line computer searches for jobs. Employers could come to the sites and be assured of finding workers for temporary work without having to troll Home Depot parking lots.
Single people could bed down in gymnasiums; families could be allocated individual classrooms. Part of the agreement for use of the campus for housing could be resident responsibility for putting the classrooms and so on back into school-day organization by, say, seven o'clock in the morning. Adult residents would have to leave the campus throughout the school day but minor children could attend their regular public school.
Teachers who will have been laid-off for next school year could find work as campus organizers and staff. Many will be familiar with the school sites which would be invaluable in the first few weeks until things are fully up and running. Giving a home to a student population that might otherwise move out of the area would help maintain school numbers and attendance; since California funds schools according to average daily attendance and not property taxes (most districts), this could help some teachers be rehired.
Turning the schools into homeless shelters would help communities survive instead of becoming fragmented. Many survivors of the other Great Depression were deeply scarred by how their families were broken up or how they had to move from place to place looking for shelter and jobs. In these troubled times, society needs grounding. Schools can serve that purpose.
After all, schools are society's last line of defense before law enforcement.
California Pink Day: March 13. California law requires school districts to inform teachers by March 15 if the districts cannot guarantee jobs for the following school year. My school district is going to "let go" almost four hundred teachers.