Anaheim is turning the former Tampico Motel on State College Boulevard into affordable housing for young adults, city officials said Thursday at an event celebrating state and county funding for the conversion.
The city will renovate the motel, which officials bemoaned as once a trouble spot in town, into an affordable housing complex with supportive services. The state and county have given $7.5 million for the city to buy the motel and complete the conversion.
“Affordable housing is one of the best investments we can make in our neighborhoods,” said Councilmember Stephen Faessel, who represents the district the motel is in.
The motel had 32 rooms and is planned to reopen as affordable housing in late 2025. Erin Ryan, a spokesperson for Anaheim, said the state funding covered the cost of buying the motel, and $2 million from CalOptima will cover most, if not all, of construction costs to convert the rooms into studio apartments.
The motel opened in 1960. Faessel said there was a time not too long ago when there was little to celebrate where the motel is, and it had outlived its usefulness.
“For years this motel was a problem for the families that just lived on the other side,” Faessel said.
The Tampico Motel is the third conversion of its kind in Anaheim. The city opened two other motel conversions to serve as housing in 2021 and 2022. In June, the city unveiled a 102-unit affordable housing complex on Orangewood Avenue near the 5 Freeway.
Orange County Supervisor Vicente Sarmiento said the conversion is a cost-effective and fast way to create affordable housing since building new units takes a long time and is expensive.
The complex will focus on housing young adults who have been through the foster care system and are homeless or are at risk of being unhoused. The goal is to provide stable housing at a critical stage to help them become self-sufficient and avoid falling into a lifetime of homelessness, Ryan said.
The nonprofit Jamboree Housing is in talks with the city to run the future housing complex, and has submitted a proposal for a young adult community with supportive services, Ryan said.
“This is a group that sadly often falls through the cracks,” she said.
The City Council voted in 2022 to buy the motel for $5.3 million. The signage for the Tampico Motel will likely be removed and the building will adopt a new name.
