One Way to Get People Off the Streets: Buy Hotels

[JacksinPA]

One Way to Get People Off the Streets: Buy Hotels (Published 2021)

For homeless people, a place to live is life changing to a degree that almost no other intervention can provide.

www.nytimes.com

For homeless people, a place to live is life changing to a degree that almost no other intervention can provide.

SAN FRANCISCO — The inside of the van was lined with plastic. The driver was masked and ready to go. There was a seat for just one passenger.

Gregory Sanchez eyed the setup warily. Mr. Sanchez was 64 and homeless, and the van was there to ferry him from a sidewalk tent to a room where he could shelter from the pandemic. It was good news, blessed news, he said. It was also a little creepy.

Mr. Sanchez didn’t know where he was going, and the sheets of foggy plastic, which coated the seats and windows to prevent the spread of disease, made it impossible to see out the window. Riding away from his longtime home in San Francisco’s Mission District, he cycled through dark possibilities — “It felt like I was in one of those movies where they take you to an army base or something” — before the door opened in front of a boutique hotel. He stepped down from the van and walked to a curved granite reception desk where he set a bin of clothes on a luggage cart.
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There may be some seeming largesse here but I think this is a great idea. Big hotels like Marriott Courtyard have closed permanently, so the New York City might classify these as distressed properties & take them over for homeless housing,. Of course, the Repubs will call this welfare run amok. Watch.

 

[Subieguy]

another thing going on is that many malls in the country are slowly dying. In Seattle housing with support services are going in!

 

[Checkerboard Strangler]

One Way to Get People Off the Streets: Buy Hotels (Published 2021)

For homeless people, a place to live is life changing to a degree that almost no other intervention can provide.

www.nytimes.com

For homeless people, a place to live is life changing to a degree that almost no other intervention can provide.

SAN FRANCISCO — The inside of the van was lined with plastic. The driver was masked and ready to go. There was a seat for just one passenger.

Gregory Sanchez eyed the setup warily. Mr. Sanchez was 64 and homeless, and the van was there to ferry him from a sidewalk tent to a room where he could shelter from the pandemic. It was good news, blessed news, he said. It was also a little creepy.

Mr. Sanchez didn’t know where he was going, and the sheets of foggy plastic, which coated the seats and windows to prevent the spread of disease, made it impossible to see out the window. Riding away from his longtime home in San Francisco’s Mission District, he cycled through dark possibilities — “It felt like I was in one of those movies where they take you to an army base or something” — before the door opened in front of a boutique hotel. He stepped down from the van and walked to a curved granite reception desk where he set a bin of clothes on a luggage cart.
========================================================
There may be some seeming largesse here but I think this is a great idea. Big hotels like Marriott Courtyard have closed permanently, so the New York City might classify these as distressed properties & take them over for homeless housing,. Of course, the Repubs will call this welfare run amok. Watch.

The old Motel 6 on the corner NEVER EVER made a profit.
I kid you not, old neighbors said it got built in 1990 and they never saw more than twelve cars max, and I've never seen more than five or six and maybe one or two tractor trailers.
So, last summer LA County took it over, put up a somewhat innocuous green privacy fence around it and turned it into "Project Room Key" and suddenly all the homeless wandering around began to disappear.
You can't use drugs if you're in the program, so the remaining homeless on our streets are the drunks and the addicts.
I'm sorry, I just don't have as much sympathy for them. They know now what I knew when I WAS a drug addict, you have to hit bottom and get help.
The folks living in Project Room Key follow a plan, a plan that involves getting them better work if they're working now, or just getting them a job, and moving them steadily toward life outside of Project Room Key. The key is turnover...they don't want people staying at PRK permanently.

And it appears to be working.