Using its emergency powers, Los Angeles may “commandeer” hotels that refuse to take homeless vouchers during the pandemic. Luxury hotels like the InterContinental Downtown and Ritz Carlton have pushed back on pleas to house the homeless.
Project Roomkey is a “collaborative effort by the State, County and the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA) to secure hotel and motel rooms for vulnerable people experiencing homelessness.” The goal is to reduce the spread of virus by taking vulnerable people off the streets. Los Angeles hopes to secure 15,000 hotel rooms in the days ahead to meet this goal.
Hotels are not being asked to rent rooms for free. Instead, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) will pay hotels 75% of the room cost. But many hotels have resisted, citing:
- liability issues
- security concerns
- objections from corporate management
- fear of lost revenue from being branded a “homeless hotel”
Notable holdouts include luxury hotels like the InterContinental Grand downtown or the Ritz Carlton – JW Marriott complex at LA Live, a vast entertainment complex in LA’s South Park District.
Art Avaness, a realtor who manages the Ritz Carlton, told KTTV that the plan was well-intentioned, but unworkable…at his properties.
“In theory, it’s a great idea, I support the program but in practice specifically for this property, it just isn’t, because you want to house hundreds of homeless people in a structure that’s literally in the same building with 224 homeowners? Having it in your own home basically is just a little too much, in fact, it’s offensive.”
But the Los Angeles City Council is now exploring ways it can commandeer hotels, especially luxury hotels, which do not participate. Mike Bonin, a LA City Councilmember, said:
“As we look to hotels to step up, those that have benefited from public investment and public largess – those are the first that we should be looking towards.”
Bonin has directed city officials to compile a list of all hotels in the city which have benefited from tax breaks.
Economic incentive for development is hardly unique to Los Angeles, but luxury hotels have benefited greatly from tax breaks and other incentives. For example, LA Live received over $270 million in incentives (over a 25 period). The InterContinental is slated to receive $250 million over 25 years.
This has Bonin scratching his head:
“The hotels are losing money and hotel workers aren’t getting paid.
“This, literally, can be a win, win, win – a triple bottom line of improving public health, helping the hotels stay solvent, which helps he city treasury and putting people back to work.”
CONCLUSION
Los Angeles has determined that it can use its emergency powers to “commandeer” hotels. It wants to avoid this because litigation would be costly and may end up taking longer to resolve than an approach which encourages voluntarily participation. But the warning has been issued: you might soon be sharing your $500/night hotel room with shoeless Joe.
During this time of crisis, is such government action justified? Should California and California taxpayers be footing huge hotel bills instead of more aggressively pursing a long-term solution?
Hey Mathew. Was just looking at a old post of yours where you promised to post about chairman’s circle but you never did. May I ask why? I am very interested in it. The thread has resurfaced on FT. We would love to know your knowledge about it. Thanks again and stay safe.
I can do it, but it will just be a regurgitation from Brian Sumer’s old post.
Considering that the post is now down, I think that a lot of people would be very interested to here about it. I have to imagine there is at least one person on the Internet who has this status and can speak up about it. No one on FT surprisingly though. Thanks Mathew.
Park Hyatt must be so glad they have not opened yet downtown.
May create bed bug problem.
One hotel in another city did this and stopped because the homeless guests were disruptive while usual guests are not or not to the same magnitude.
Big problem.
“Commandeer”, not “Commander” (last paragraph). Totally different words.
Sorry, I probably typed it wrong and it auto-corrected.
Matthew, so you are not even taking a position on this strong-armed and horrible tactic that the city of LA may do? If I were the hotel chains involved, I’d say if you do this, I’m pulling out of this market and never returning.
I have a strong position. You can probably guess it. But I just wanted to present both sides of this story and step back.
“you might soon be sharing your $500/night hotel room with shoeless Joe.”
If Joe Biden is in town, you might also be sharing your hotel room with sleepy Joe.
Here in DC the city obtained apartments two years ago in buildings around the city to offer the homeless a subsidized place to call their own and attempt to rebuild their lives. It’s been mostly a disaster. Long time residents of these buildings (many are older and established with rents over $4K a month) had outrageous problems as a result. Drug use, illegal activities, assaults, robberies…it was endless. I can only imagine what would happen in a temporary hotel situation with hundreds of rooms and all placed together there. It would be chaos. They would have to have security/police on every floor. Damage to property could be devastating.
The situation is bad but I have to believe there are better solutions than this.
Guest is a guest.
But rate isn’t a rate, so it seems like high expense hotels don’t make much sense to include.
Is a guest a guest, though? A paying guest or a guest whose rate is paid by a company they represent is much different than someone being swept off the street at the taxpayer’s expense. They cannot be held liable – either directly (charged for damages) or indirectly (fired from their job) for poor behavior. This isn’t to say that all the homeless will be problematic, but as a CA native, I can only imagine the amount of heroine and meth that would take place in these rooms. I’m generally a fairly bleeding-heart liberal, but I’m totally against this. But I don’t have a solution, either.
It’s not going to happen. Having a handful of homeless people stay at the IC and the JW won’t suddenly fix the problem in downtown LA. I think Councilman Bonin is just trying to drum up press for himself to win votes by making the “big evil corporations” look bad.
The fact that people reside in these properties permanently should be the end of the conversation. Perhaps the LA City council would be willing to share their homes with homeless Angelenos. As councilmembers, they too receive money and special privileges from the city.
The biggest problem is going to be getting the homeless people out once this is over. Is there a plan for that?
@Jerry: Absolutely agree. We demand hypocrites like him to provide a thorough demo and watch the results before coercing us to march their order. We have wasted so much resources on those who won’t help themselves and fleeced government coffers to enrich crony capitalists and pop up entitled unions.
I challenge someone to name one case where a large number of homeless people were suddenly given shelter in a hotel or hotel like setting (condo, apt, etc) that ended well. Because it never ever does.
I can’t possibly imagine that putting homeless up in these hotels would not end in disaster. And were I in management at one of these properties I’d fight this tooth and nail.
It’s not just about the fact the room is being paid for. Who is going to be liable for damages? What rights will the hotel have to evict a problematic guest? How can the city ensure that the homeless aren’t bringing in things like bed bugs etc?
I’m not sure that their is or can be a solution that will end homelessness. Certainly there are people who end up homeless because they don’t have a safety net. Those people can recover their lives given assistance and they should get it. But their are a great many others that are homeless that no matter how much assistance you provide are never going to get off the streets. That doesn’t mean we ignore them or that we should not try to help them. But the reality is that we are not going to “end” homelessness.
I agree. The best solution is to house them in all of the democrap politicians homes. Especially Nancy Peelousi, Adam Sh!t, Gavin Newscum, Mad Max Waters, etc.
You wouldn’t want to be charitable like your Bible says, now would you? Nope, didn’t think so.
The big question is whether the homeless will be able to accumulate loyalty points.
Good for these hotels to fight back against this. The homeless are gross.
If the homeless person doesn’t cause problems and stays over 30 days, do they then get protected as a tenant? Many locales are enacting no eviction orders in response to the newly unemployed. What happens if the feds and city stop paying at 75% of room rate (is that 75% of rack rate or government per diem)? Can the “resident” be evicted? Not to mention that San Francisco is providing alcohol and marijuana to homeless housed in hotels….
This is a complete infringement of the right to private property, a human right which supersedes any emergency powers the government gives itself. Doing this puts the hotel at great risk of being destroyed by homeless and poor people who have zero reasons to respect the sanctity of the property and not destroy it. We have seen what the homeless have done to NYC subways which are already a disaster. Any cop who would carry out this order is committing a crime and the hotel owners would have a right to defend themselves and their property against illegal confiscation by the liberal government of California. Why doesn’t the governor house homeless in his mansion. I’m sympathetic to the homeless but that doesn’t mean reason should go out the window.
While I don’t disagree with some of your points, you need to study up on “human” rights versus “Constitutional” rights, champ. There is no “human” right to property, personal or otherwise.
That’s where we disagree and why I oppose communism and socialism wholeheartedly. The right to private property ownership is as fundamental as the right to breathe. Just because oppressive governments don’t recognize it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist and those governments aren’t committing crimes against humanity,
“Using its emergency powers, Los Angeles may “commandeer” hotels that refuse to take homeless vouchers during the pandemic.”
What are “homeless vouchers”? Is there an article missing here?
It can easily be Googled. California has been using a program to put the homeless into motels to keep them from congregating in groups. So far the program has been to negotiate with willing motel owners. Forcing a property to take the vouchers would be a huge change. #notgonnahappen
It’s a good idea. The properties are vacant, the homeless are in need. I view it as a win-win. It should be implemented world-wide.
@Paolo: you probably have an empty room or a couch in your home. How about you take couple homeless people to stay with you? That would be a good start.
I’ll do it when you do it. In the meantime, lets agree with @paolo, and have the HOTELS that do this for a living accept the money they are being offered to house poeple…ok?
Can’t the just use a Super 8 or Motel 6 instead?
The government is willing to pay 75% of the room rate. They are using all hotel rooms in the city avalible. Why shouldn’t ALL hotels participate? Why only those which are low rated?
Dear LA,
Here’s a thought: maybe you should have focused on infrastructure to help the homeless instead of pulling drastic moves like this one under the guise of emergency need when it was your own unpreparedness to blame?
Love,
Justin
You mean respect NIMBYism by respecting NIMBYism? The people who don’t want to see the problems of society are the SAME ones who didn’t let society fix this before.
In Australia, we’ve been housing the homeless in hotels for weeks now, to protect them from coronavirus. Thus far, I’ve seen very few problems. Just a lot of gratitude. Especially from those genuinely down on their luck and needing help to rebuild their lives. And hotels can stay open, thus preventing additional lay-offs of employees..
The issue is not hotels but hotels where rooms go for $500 a night and cost $30,000-$60,000 to renovate. Housing homeless in 5 star hotels in the U.S. puts the hotels at great risk of being damaged. And unfortunately this is the U.S. with different demographics. I suspect a lot more of the homeless in Australia are less likely to turn 5 star hotels into nyc subways. Motels and cheap hotels, I’m all for government paying for rooms during times like these if it reduces coronavirus risk.
Are you saying homeless people are bad people? They are more likely to damage rooms than drunk rich people who party hard and don’t care or respect things? How about we judge PEOPLE, rather than just same ‘homeless people don’t deserve good things’…If SPECIFIC people present an issue, deal with it. But don’t say we wont accept ANY of ‘these’ people.
Then you should offer your home to these people? Where is your compassion?
I donate a LARGE amount of my income to homeless causes. I would happily welcome someone into my home if they needed to be here, I have let a friend that WOULD have been homeless sleep here for 6 months before. But thats not what this story is ABOUT. Its about a HOTEL (you know, those places that house people for money?) refusing money for housing people.
Debit, where art thou?
I’ve been wondering this myself? He’s gone dark…
Congratulations to us all. Why encourage the collectivist.
Study after study shows that giving people a hand, and helping them get housing helps them, and causes little to no issues. Homeless people are people just like you and I. If there are empty rooms, and these properties got help from the government to OPEN, the LEAST they can do is accept some money from the government to help the people.
https://endhomelessness.org/whats-new-in-homelessness-research/
Ex LA resident here. I did not live in Holmby Hills or some ritzy place because I could not afford it. I have sympathy for poor and homeless people but if the city wants to pay for hotel rooms, how about Motel 6 or a budget motel? Not the Ritz Carlton or Intercontinental. It is offensive that middle and lower income taxpayers money would be used for this
Ok well i need help i be came homeless about 5 months ago i was working but this whole virus came along and i lost everything iv never been on the streets before am scared to be out here i just wish i could get some real help so i can get my life back together iv called so many places and no one can help me