In a rare moment of common sense, a deal was reached to take a ballot measure mandating that Los Angeles hotels involuntarily house homeless people off the ballot.
On December 5, the Los Angeles City Council voted to withdraw “Hotel Land Use, Replacement Housing, and Police Permit Requirements; Program Placing Unhoused Individuals in Vacant Hotel Rooms” from the March 2024 ballot. The ordinance was a union-backed measure that would have made Los Angeles hotels house homeless people next to paying guests.
The measure would have required hotel operators to report their vacancies to the city of Los Angeles each afternoon. The city’s homeless agencies would then send individuals or families to the hotels, with “market rate” vouchers for payment in hand. The hotels would not be allowed to decline these guests or their vouchers.
The measure, which many saw as a negotiating tactic, was proposed by Unite Here Local 11, a union representing Los Angeles hospitality workers. It collected more than 120,000 signatures. When it originally went to the City Council, the council did not enact it, but agreed to put it on the March 2024 ballot.
Opposition to the measure from hotel operators and others was fierce. As a column in the Los Angeles Daily News put it, “Imagine the dismay of the people who work in the hotels if they have to manage that situation. Business travelers, tourists and visitors will be side-by-side in the corridors, elevators, lobby and breakfast room with people who have been relocated from a nearby tent encampment to enjoy the same accommodations, paid for by city taxpayers.”
Questions about the safety of housekeepers (members of the very union that proposed the bill) were also raised.
This tourism and convention-destroying prospect was a nightmare for hotel operators and the travel industry. Although still recovering from the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, 2022 Los Angeles tourism spending reached $34.5 billion, 91% of the record set in 2019.
Yet once the homeless hotel housing measure was on the ballot, it was by no means guaranteed that voters would reject it. It was portrayed as creating more affordable housing for a city starved for it. So the hotels and the city council entered into negotiations with the union.
In the end, the hotels got the homeless housing in hotels measure off the ballot. A compromise measure was approved by a 14-0 City Council majority.
But the ordinances co-authored by Council President Paul Krekorian's office, Unite Here and representatives of the hotel industry, still demands developers of new hotel proprieties replace any permanent housing lost in the building process. The bill would also boost public oversight over short-term rentals, hotels and other properties,
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In the last few years, the health-meets-travel trend has reached new heights, in no small part thanks to gyms themselves. In 2019 the luxury fitness-club empire Equinox opened its first hotel in New York City. Now, everyone's taking their exercise routines with them wherever they go. “Before the pandemic, my clientele was local,” says Luke Goulden, a London-based personal trainer who now also coaches clients virtually. “They don't want to break routines when they're traveling for work or pleasure.” The good news: Hotels are paying attention.
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