After 21 months, here’s why Mecklenburg is closing its $6.3M COVID shelter hotel
Mecklenburg County is closing its COVID-19 isolation hotel at the end of the year after roughly 21 months of operation.
The hotel opened in late March 2020 to provide rooms for people without other housing options while recovering from COVID-19 or quarantining after exposure.
The emergency COVID-19 shelter costs roughly $300,000 each month, Mecklenburg health director Gibbie Harris told county commissioners Tuesday night. That puts the cost for 21 months at roughly $6.3 million.
That cost includes the lease, staffing, food, security, cleaning and supplies, Harris said. In September, county spokeswoman Rebecca Carter told the Observer the cost of the lease by itself was $42,000 per week.
On Tuesday, just one person was staying at the emergency hotel, Harris said. And over the last week, there have been several days with no occupants. The maximum number of occupants at one time lately has been 10 people, she said.
“It’s not terribly cost effective,” she said.
The county has been working with shelter partners since May to come up with solutions for sheltering COVID-19 patients or people quarantining without a place to stay, Harris said.
“We have to normalize the ability of these shelters to be able to manage communicable disease, including COVID,” she said. “Especially with these small numbers that we’re seeing, they should be able to accommodate a handful of people in their facilities where they can isolate and quarantine if needed. We will continue to work with them and to support them in this work.”
The county intends to close the hotel on Dec. 31, Harris said. Federal Emergency Management Agency funding for local emergency COVID-19 shelters will end on that date.
In April, NC Gov. Roy Cooper announced that FEMA would pay 75% of costs associated with operating housing alternatives for N.C. residents with unstable housing who need to quarantine due to COVID-19. The state would pay the remaining 25%, the governor’s office said at the time.
Inside the quarantine hotel
The county has not confirmed the location of its COVID-19 hotel. But one person who stayed at the quarantine shelter over the summer of 2020 told the Observer he stayed at the Econo Lodge near the Charlotte Douglas International Airport.
Kansas City resident Aaron Hall stayed at the hotel for 10 days and nine nights in August 2020, shortly after arriving in Charlotte to buy a car.
He started feeling sick — losing his senses of taste and smell — after flying to Charlotte.
After getting a COVID-19 test, Hall took an Uber to the quarantine hotel, encountering armed security guards and rules like: No alcohol. No drugs. No smoking. No visitors. No deliveries. No leaving the room.
Hall’s stay at the quarantine hotel included black mold in the room and TV dinners he usually couldn’t eat. Hall, a vegan, had to convince a childhood friend to bring him fresh groceries.
Still, he was thankful to find a place to stay in an unfamiliar city in the midst of a pandemic.
“It’s definitely not a great motel,” he told the Observer last year. “But it’s a place. I’m so grateful that at least I don’t feel like I’m putting other people at risk.”
Mecklenburg County COVID levels
The announced closing of the quarantine hotel comes as Mecklenburg County’s COVID-19 trends continue to improve.
In early November, the county released its latest COVID-19 trend data, showing coronavirus hospitalizations and case trends are getting better.
On Nov. 3, the most recently reported date, 144 people were hospitalized with COVID-19 in Mecklenburg County facilities. That’s the lowest single day of hospitalizations in the county since July 25.
At the height of Mecklenburg’s fall peak of cases, 458 people were hospitalized on a single day in August.
Mecklenburg County recently announced it would lower the threshold for dropping its mask requirement for people indoors in public places. The county needs to report a positivity rate below 5% for seven consecutive days to end the mask mandate.
That will take time, despite hopeful trends. The county’s positivity rate has increased for six straight days, in the most recent data available, according to Mecklenburg.
Data for the positivity rate released online lags by two days. On Monday, the rate was 6.1%, according to Mecklenburg County.
This story was originally published November 17, 2021 at 12:25 PM.
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