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The City of Los Angeles has proposed a solution to help its homeless community: requiring vacant hotel rooms to house those without a roof every night, ranging from one-star motels to five-star luxury properties.
In 2020, the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority documented that there were at least 41,290 people experiencing homelessness at any given time in the city, having risen by double-digit percentages in recent years.
There’s no doubt residents will continue to debate over the suggestion till it’s time for the final decision to be made in March 2024, when they will vote for the referendum question in the civic election ballot.
According to Daily Hive, should the law come into fruition, hotels across the city will be made to report the number of vacant rooms available at 2pm daily, with costs from the stays fully covered by the municipal government.
In addition, hotels will need to provide monthly reports documenting the number of occupied and unoccupied rooms in the property, and the total number of available rooms on each day.
As per the ordinance, this proposed solution came about due to the rising hotel development scene in Los Angeles, which ranks second in the country in the number of new hotel rooms.
“While hotels can bring good jobs and add to the city’s economic base, many hotels burden the city’s social services and exacerbate the city’s housing crisis,” it explained.
Thus, if residents are in favor of the suggestion, both new and existing establishments will be required to make guest rooms available to “unhoused Angelenos on a non-discriminatory basis.”
Expectedly, not everyone in the hotel and tourism industry are in favor of the idea, with some telling Insider the hospitality industry is not trained to function as support centers for the homeless.
Citing the lack of “support from policing and mental services,” Thomas Franklin, a night auditor at the Beverly Hills Marriot, who himself was previously homeless, said that he didn’t think it was a task hotel staff were equipped for.
Fortunately, even if the vote doesn’t go through, the city has other plans to tackle the problem of homelessness. BNN Bloomberg reported that Los Angeles plans to spend up to US$3 billion to build at least 14,000 housing units to aid the community.
Furthermore, reports have emerged that the local government is in the process of taking over the infamous Los Angeles’ Cecil Hotel, which has been converted into a housing complex, to help house the unsheltered.
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http://www.designtaxi.com/news/420217/Los-Angeles-May-Require-Hotels-To-Open-Vacant-Rooms-To-The-Homeless/
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