Next year, everyone is going to be asked to vote on a solution to a homeless problem that is freaking most everyone in Los Angeles out. L.A. has already moved around 1,200 unhoused people— out of as many as 60,000 county-wide— off the streets and into motels as part of Mayor Karen Bass' "Inside Safe" program, an effort to dismantle encampments across the city and help the homeless build lives off the streets at a cost of millions of dollars per week, sometimes into wretched rooms that the new residents hate and say are worse than their lives in tents were. Bass says the city is planning on purchasing hotels and motels to provide shelter for unhoused people.
Meanwhile though, the hotel industry is freaking out over a ballot proposition that has qualified for next year. The ordinance was proposed by Unite Here Local 11, the union that represents most of the city’s hospitality workers. CNN reported that “If voters give the green light, every hotel in town– from a suburban Super 8 Motel to glitzy hostelries like the storied Biltmore– will be required to report vacancies and welcome homeless guests who have a voucher from the city. The hotels would be paid market-rate for the rooms. The measure would also have implications for developers, who would have to replace any housing knocked down to make way for new hotels. ‘They don’t seem to understand who the unhoused are,’ says [Local 11 union president Kurt] Petersen of hotel industry opponents. ‘We’re talking about seniors, students, working people– that’s who the voucher program would benefit the most.’”
How to handle the city’s worsening housing and homelessness crises are principal planks in every campaign for local political office. In polls, more than half of LA voters say tackling homelessness is their number one concern. The county’s homeless services agency has an annual budget of over $800 million, which is spent on everything from counts to counseling, from shelters to permanent housing.
Yet, the homeless population is still climbing; ramshackle encampments dot Los Angeles’ streets and parks.
In early 2020, the city saw a 16.1% rise in homelessness compared to the previous year. The agency said at the time that despite expanded homeless services, “economic conditions and (the) legacy of systemic racism” continued to push more people to homelessness. In 2022, the number of homeless seniors in particular is on the rise, the agency said.
The idea to use vacant hotel rooms came from Project RoomKey– a pandemic-era program funded by the federal government that sheltered more than 10,000 homeless people in more than 30 hotels that volunteered to participate, Petersen says.
“It’s common sense,” according to Petersen. “It already happens, it’s been happening more during the pandemic. It needs to continue to happen.”
About a quarter of RoomKey participants eventually moved on into permanent housing. But the project is now winding down.
…According to a 2020 report from the homeless services agency, more than 14,000 unhoused people in the county have serious mental illnesses and more than 15,000 are grappling with substance abuse issues.
Yesterday I read a critique of the proposal by Gary Leff, who noted that because the union was able to get enough signatures to qualify it, the city council was forced to vote to either pass it or refer it to a referendum. Of course they chose the latter option. Leff presented every possible negative argument that is being put forward by the hotel industry. “Hotels would have to inform the city about open inventory every day at 2pm,” he wrote. “But that’s even prior to check-in time at most hotels, and many continue to sell rooms even after midnight. Customers increasingly book hotels last minute, and airport hotels often get surges of demand in the evening during storms or other major airline cancellation events.”
Will homeless be put up at the Four Seasons? No matter what you think of someone’s ‘right to housing’ it will inevitably conflict with a property’s brand experience that then diminishes its ability to hold revenue premiums. That not only reduces the income-generating potential of a hotel, but jeopardizes its ability to repay debt. And riskier hotel debt makes it tougher to finance new hotel projects in L.A.
Some critics have argued that politicians should have to report vacancies in bedrooms of their homes by 4 p.m. each day and make those rooms available to house the homeless. However, and while the homeless aren’t soldiers, this might run into third amendment problems. (The third amendment has been deemed to have been incorporated against the states by the 14th amendment. While it limits quartering of soldiers in private homes even during wartime, it shows that requiring boarding in someone’s home even in wartime is limited by the constitution.)
Fundamentally, though, for this to make sense you’d need to believe that,
The problem of homelessness is primarily about lack of a place to sleep and shower
And that there’s no way to voluntarily purchase or provide shelter in the market
I’m not suggesting L.A. buy hotels and operate them for the homeless, there are probably better operators. But hotels which are geared towards traditional guests aren’t going to have the services many in the homeless population need— either to assist them out of their situation, or to deal with their experiences in the moment.
It seems far better to (1) contract with hotels for blocks of rooms for housing, as an alternative to shelters. Pay a rate that entices some hotel owners, package that with social services, and prepare to deliver rooms in a way that helps the homeless and manages the experiences of other guests at the same time.
Requiring hotels to take in homeless people on a one-off basis, when they happen to have a room available, seems like the least effective way to address the problem of homelessness. The program is based on same-day availability of rooms, so homeless will often be forced to move from hotel to hotel every night, too, which hardly seems the best way to address the problem— for the homeless themselves, or for the city administering the program, since presumably many of those staying won’t just be checking out, hopping in an Uber, and then showing up at the next hotel on their itinerary (and waiting at the pool or bar until check-in time?).
He ends his argument by pointing out that the union housekeepers would wind up with plenty of more work, cleaning a lot more rooms after these one night stays. This spokeswoman for the hotel industry suggests an even more insidious motive:
So instead of public housing we have public hoteling. But as rent prices go up in LA county, the number of people placed on the streets will soon double as those on the edge become those over the edge. Until rents are indexed to the minimum wage, or rent increases prohibited until homelessness is solved , the realtors golden path to population serfdom shall not be stopped.
As neoliberalist capitalism keeps being practiced with total zeal by the monied, the numbers at the bottom with nothing will continue to expand. And everyone who votes has affirmed this for over 50 years.
Since reagan emptied out the asylums so as to save public money being squandered on the mentally ill (so it could be given to the capitalists), THAT part of the shithole has expanded also. And everyone who votes has affirmed this for over 40 years also.
In a democracy, when NOBODY votes to ever fix anything... nothing ever gets fixed.
It strikes me that after creating an ever-expanding demographic who have nothing and who are significantly damaged, the best thing anyone can think of to do…