Construction on a long-vacant central Bakersfield motel is expected to start this week or next, kicking off a roughly 10-month build that would turn the fire-damaged property into 30 units of permanent supportive housing, with half reserved for veterans. The former Ramkabir Motel at 901 Union Ave. has sat empty since a fire tore through several of its rooms in October 2023.
The timeline comes from a city council meeting agenda, as reported by KGET 17 News, which lists completion by September 2027. The Bakersfield City Council is set to take up the project Wednesday at 5:15 p.m. at 1501 Truxtun Ave., where members will consider combining two grant funds totaling more than $16.4 million for development and operations, according to the same agenda.
City officials say the project will convert the motel into permanent supportive housing for people struggling with homelessness, pairing the housing units with community space and offices for behavioral and mental health services. Half of the planned units are designated for veterans at risk of or experiencing homelessness, officials said, while the California Department of Housing and Community Development has separately described 15 of the 30 planned homes as reserved for veterans facing homelessness and behavioral health challenges in its own announcement.
Who Pays for What
Per the meeting agenda, the city expects to spend about $11.7 million on construction and roughly $12.7 million on supportive services, operations, and rental assistance. Those figures sit alongside the city's submission of a joint Homekey+ grant application with Community Action Partnership of Kern, through which city officials said Bakersfield received more than $14 million. The city also draws on state Homeless Housing, Assistance and Prevention grant funds, though the agenda does not spell out how all these funding streams combine into a single project total.
Accounts of the motel's size differ. The Bakersfield Californian described the property as a 38-room motel when it reported on the state grant, matching the room count later cited by state housing officials. An earlier KGET report, however, referred to it as a 37-room motel. Timing on the city's purchase of the property is similarly unsettled: one record tied to the November construction report places the purchase in April 2024, while an earlier KGET account said the city council approved buying the motel for $1.4 million in May of that year.
CAPK's Role on the Ground
Under the proposed agreement, Community Action Partnership of Kern would handle project planning, design, construction, and completion. The nonprofit would also manage day-to-day property operations, maintenance, security, and supportive services once residents move in, the meeting agenda states. CAPK is expected to offer case management, mental health and substance use treatment, physical health care coordination, education and employment services, life skills training, and rental support to residents.
The Ramkabir project is one piece of a much larger statewide push. California's Homekey program has awarded more than $3.8 billion to local governments to convert motels and similar buildings into homeless housing, according to CalMatters, which reported that nearly 13,500 people now live at Homekey sites statewide. The same investigation found that projects involving about 3,000 homes — roughly one in five promised by the program — were not finished as of the end of last year, with another 2,000 units occupied only on a temporary basis.
Research cited by The Fresno Bee offers some context for why cities keep pursuing this model: a 2020 systematic review of 26 studies found permanent supportive housing programs decreased homelessness by 88% and improved housing stability by 41% compared with short-term, transitional programs. Fresno is pursuing a similar conversion of its own, having received $32 million in state Homekey+ funds to turn the Valley Inn motel on North Parkway Drive into what it's calling Sage Commons — a plan to convert 106 interim housing units into 84 apartments, with nine reserved for veterans, plus an updated laundry facility and community space for case-management services.
What Comes Next
Back in Bakersfield, the fate of the Ramkabir conversion now rests with Wednesday's council vote on the combined grant funding and project agreements. If approved, workers would begin transforming the fire-scarred motel into supportive apartments within days, with the city aiming to have residents moved in by the following fall.
