Motel Rooms become Recovery Wards for the Homeless

After someone has a health crisis and gets emergency medical care, the patient is sent home to recover. But what if that person has no home? The homeless can’t get well when they go back to the street, and they end up cycling back into expensive hospitals and emergency rooms.

Now one program in Southern California has tackled that dilemma by giving people just out of the hospital a place to heal – by turning cheap motels into triage and recovery wards.

Just up the freeway from Disneyland, in the city of Buena Park in Orange County, Paul Leon stands outside the beat-up remnant of a seedy motel. Above him, a faded pink sign advertises the Coral Motel – whose rooms back in its prime cost 35 bucks a night.