Poll: 86% of LA residents don’t want homeless in hotels
Conn Carroll
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With Los Angeles residents set to vote in March 2024 on a ballot measure requiring all hotels to house the homeless, a new poll shows that voters are overwhelmingly skeptical of the proposal.
A new Public Opinion Strategies poll of 500 Los Angeles residents shows 86% believe the city should not prioritize housing homeless people in hotels, and the recent experience of the Mayfair Hotel demonstrates that skepticism is completely justified.
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Despite the fact that COVID was known to spread faster indoors than outdoors, California Gov. Gavin Newsom introduced Project Roomkey in April 2020 to move California’s nation-leading homeless population into hotels. The hotels themselves were unusually vacant thanks to the pandemic.
One such hotel in Los Angeles, the Mayfair Hotel, applied for the program and soon began to take in homeless residents at the taxpayers’ expense. The results were unsurprising. Windows were shattered, bathrooms vandalized, staff threatened, and property destroyed. All told, the owners of the Mayfair ended up sending the city an $11.5 million bill for damages.
And that’s just inside the hotel.
Outside the hotel, neighborhood residents complained of open-air drug use, discarded hypodermic needles, and increased theft. “I don’t want them back in this neighborhood,” longtime homeowner Darlene Adderison said. “I want my peace. I am 66 years old, and I want my peace.”
Project Roomkey wound down in 2022, with the last homeless recipients leaving in July. But Mayor Karen Bass now wants to buy the hotel and make it a permanent homeless shelter, and the neighborhood homeowners are livid.
“The neighborhood is still recovering from Project Roomkey,” resident Ruben Lares said. “The purchase of the Mayfair would completely destroy the community once again.”
And forcing all hotels to become homeless shelters would destroy the entire city.
There is another way.
One-hundred-and-twenty miles down I-5, the city of San Diego has solved its homeless problem. The secret? Not tolerating homeless encampments.
“There were hundreds,” one homeless advocate told the San Diego Union-Tribune, pointing to a Commercial Street in downtown San Diego that was not completely void of tents. “Where did they all go?”
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Some have moved into shelters, others have moved on to other sites in San Diego, and many have just moved south to Chula Vista, which is now considering copying San Diego’s camping ban.
Giving homeless people free hotel rooms isn’t going to solve homelessness. It will only encourage more people to live on the street. Without the threat of fines and jail, homeless people are not going to take the steps necessary, like getting sober, to become responsible members of society.