Local Facilities

Costa Mesa Motor Inn: The Costa Mesa Motor Inn is an emergency shelter that can house up to seventy-seven families. The Inn specifically assists families with children that are Orange County residents, and presently there are no specific requirements for families to qualify for this emergency resource. The goal at Costa Mesa Motor Inn is to provide emergency shelter for needy families, and to assist those individuals with available support and services. Through this service, Community Health Assessment Team-Homeless' (CHAT-H) goal is to make families self-reliant.

Upon arrival, families are interviewed to assess their specific needs. After this process, the family is given two weeks of free housing so that they have the opportunity to rehabilitate. Later, it is determined just how much a family has to contribute for renting costs according to how much they are able to afford; this is determined by using a sliding scale. Some families may pay up to $700 in housing costs, needing only a $100 donation in order to fulfill the $800 renting cost, while others may need a much higher contribution in order to fulfill the requirement at the Inn.

The average family at the Inn needs about $450 in donations to assist them in their renting costs. This is equivalent to $24 a night, per family. The families have about a year or two in the program while they become independent and self-reliant. In addition to these rent subsidies, the Inn also offers the individuals an array of programs and services to help them move forward and set them on the path to independence. Interns and students from nearby schools are dedicated in providing private tutoring for children as well as counseling services creating business opportunities for more funding.

The local church also comes in to do crafts with the children. Although the Inn is not faith-based and does not require families to participate in faith-based programs, they work with all denominations.

A Head Start program is located nearby from the Inn which gives an opportunity for the parents of these children to participate in parenting classes in order to address the needs of their family in time of crisis. Mobile health buses also make routine visits to the Inn offering health services that address concerns families might have.

The wonderful aspect of this Inn is that it provides what a particular needy family needs most in a time of crisis: temporary housing. Many organizations, public and private, may donate clothing, food, even money, but very very of these donate temporary housing. With 35,000 homeless individuals in Orange County, most of them being women and children, have access to only emergency shelters and 1,500 beds, some of them placing restrictions on families.

The Costa Mesa Motor Inn, with funding from the Illumination Foundation, provides families and children a place to call home, needed stability and support to help them on their way back to success.