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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   21611 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 9, 2023

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This is such an extremely poorly-thought-out idea that it's kind of hilarious.

The obvious problem is that any kind of substantial homeless presence in hotels would have such a negative impact on business that hotels would go to great lengths to avoid it. Perhaps they would follow some of the suggestions listed in other comments and sell hotel rooms at bargain prices to people who are flexible in their booking (e.g. booking day of, or willing to move around their booking) or even gift some guests an extra room or two. More simply, they could gift employees free rooms whenever there's a vacancy. It's also possible that most hotels in LA proper would simply close and relocate to cities in the LA area which wouldn't be affected by this law (there are many other municipalities essentially embedded in the city of LA).

But after thinking about it a bit, I think an even bigger problem is something pointed out in the article: the number of vacant rooms in a hotel can change unpredictably from day-to-day so you either have to constantly kick out homeless residents on short notice or essentially accept a permanent fraction of your rooms being used to house the homeless. Even worse, if you opt for the latter then every time there's a dip in your number of regular customers, you risk having to increase the "permanent homeless" fraction of rooms. And if you opt for the former option then you will constantly have to get into fights with homeless people who don't want to leave and risk a huge public relations disaster if that ever goes poorly. Not to mention it would be insanely disruptive to regular customers.

I think the hypothesis mentioned in the article—that this is a negotiating tactic by the hotel workers' union—makes a lot of sense. Basically it is a threat against hotel owners that if they don't increase salaries then they will be put out of business by an insane law. If this is really the union's strategy then it seems a bit risky. There is always a chance that even the law will take on a life of its own and get passed even if negotiations succeed and salaries are raised. And then everyone (hotel owners and workers alike) will be out of a job.

sell hotel rooms at bargain prices to people who are flexible in their booking

Special off-peak booking! Bargain prices! Stay three days for the price of two! kinds of promotions. If the choice is between "take a cut on pricing to get the rooms occupied by normal people" and "be forced to accept government vouchers for the homeless", then any sensible decision is going to be "cut the prices".

If the voucher scheme was for a filtered set of applicants (i.e. people temporarily needing accommodation who are not crazy, druggies, or criminals) then it might work for a while. But if it's "take anybody we send with no discretion", it never will get off the ground because a hotel is not set up to be a supervised living support system.

I think the union, as the sponsor, is allowed to unilaterally withdraw the proposition. Though someone else could propose it if it truly took off, they'd have to go through the efforts of getting signatures etc.

It would be interesting to see what chaos arose if it did somehow pass.

I think the union, as the sponsor, is allowed to unilaterally withdraw the proposition.

Interesting, I didn't notice that part. Even taking this into account, it still seems a bit dangerous: if the union hasn't reached a deal with hotel management by the deadline to withdraw the proposition then they need to either reveal their threat to be an empty one or go through with it, in which case it could well pass.

I generally am pretty open to unions and employers playing hardball with each other. The reason this sticks in my craw a bit is that, if it is a cynical maneuver, it's transparently an empty one: the union won't pull the trigger on it because it hurts workers at least as much as the employers, so it gives no actual leverage.

I guess the ambiguity of whether it's cynical or borne of genuine progressive beliefs does give it some edge, though.

Depends on the relative mobility. In many unlearned/non-specialized professions, anything that blows up the entire profession gives leverage to the workers over the employers, since the workers will just move to a different profession with minimal friction, while the employers will need to accept large losses if they want to switch to anything else. Though I guess it's still an odd move for the unions in particular, since the union itself also has a lot more to lose.

Who counts as homeless in America? In Ireland putting homeless people up in hotels is the standard thing to do but I haven't seen any news of hotels complaining about business being affected by an intake of rough sleepers and drug addicts. Add refugee accomodation and it's very lucrative and a much more stable source of income for a hotel owner or landlord than serving the market.

That kind of temporary accommodation is paid for by local councils/homelessness services and is generally because the shelters and other places are full to the brim and can't take any new entrants. It's for families and is meant to be short-term emergency accommodation, not rough sleepers and "people with complex needs". Councils don't like having to fall back on it because it costs money and isn't a permanent solution, but if you don't have beds or spaces and you have, say, a woman with three kids who otherwise is going to be on the street - well, there's not much choice.

A lot of hotels also took on refugee/asylum seekers in Direct Provision. Usual sort of complaints about this, from the people in that accommodation to the locals; general perception (unfair or not) is that the hoteliers were making profit at the expense of the community.

I don't know if the Californian proposal does mean the rough sleepers etc., it sounds like it (because if they're going to discriminate amongst the homeless based on 'are they normal or not?' I can imagine seventeen different lawsuits from seventeen different NGOs and activist groups about that).

Report for July 2023 here, it seems to be a mess to download but that's the government websites for ya!

In relation to the terms used in the report for the accommodation types see explanation below: PEA - Private Emergency Accommodation: this may include hotels, B&Bs and other residential facilities that are used on an emergency basis. Supports are provided to services users on a visiting supports basis. STA - Supported Temporary Accommodation: accommodation, including family hubs, hostels, with onsite professional support. TEA - Temporary Emergency Accommodation: emergency accommodation with no (or minimal) support.

Irish homeless numbers are way smaller than California; the latest data is as follows:

The number of people accessing State-funded emergency accommodation as of August 2023 is 12,691, according to figures published by the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage.

This figure does not include people sleeping rough, people couch surfing, homeless people in hospitals and prisons, those in Direct provision centres, and homeless households in Domestic Violence refugees. These people are not included in the regular monthly homeless figures as they are not accessing emergency homeless accommodation funded through Section 10 of the Housing Act.

By comparison, the numbers for Los Angeles (where this bill is proposed) alone, for June 2023:

The 2023 Greater Los Angeles Homeless Count results were released today, showing a 9% rise in homelessness on any given night in Los Angeles County to an estimated 75,518 people and a 10% rise in the City of Los Angeles to an estimated 46,260 people.

This is very interesting and thanks for bringing it up! Do you know a place where I can read the details about this program? Everything I was able to quickly find (e.g. this article) talks about "homeless families" being provided accommodations in hotels in Dublin. Depending on what homeless families means, this might be quite different from the most visible segment of the homeless population in LA, which seems to consist of single people with no children present. This makes me wonder if there is some screening that goes into who is eligible for the program in Ireland or if the homeless population in Ireland is just significantly different from the homeless population in LA. Also, I believe the rate of opiod abuse is much lower in Ireland, which might make a big difference.

And if you opt for the former option then you will constantly have to get into fights with homeless people who don't want to leave and risk a huge public relations disaster if that ever goes poorly.

In practice I suspect hotels would call the cops to remove them, and just deal with it if they don’t show up. Employees would then be gifted that room in perpetuity unless someone tried to reserve it.

I thought we (or rather the enlightened ones) were doing away with police and replacing them with social workers or mediation teams?

Having cops constantly going to your hotel also sounds disastrous for business. I agree that hotels would do a lot of things to try to keep rooms from going empty, including gifting all excess rooms to employees each night, if allowed. A lot would depend on what enforcement looked like I guess.

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