At this point the idea of turning hotels into housing for homeless people is not new. San Francisco and other cities adopted this idea during the pandemic to help get people off the streets. But even in San Francisco the hotels the city contracted with tended to be older buildings in decrepit parts of town that were not a major draw for tourists in the first place.

But Los Angeles is on the cusp of doing something quite different. A union of hotel workers has helped get a measure on the March ballot called the “Responsible Hotel Ordinance.” If passed, it would require every hotel to phone the city at the end of the day and inform them how many empty rooms they have available so the city could then fill those rooms with homeless people. Here’s a report from last August:

On an average night in Los Angeles County, more than 60,000 people are homeless. At the same time, there are more than 20,000 vacant hotel rooms. In 2024, residents will get to vote: Should those rooms be offered to the unhoused?

“It’s insane. It isn’t going to solve the problem,” says Stuart Waldman, president of the Valley Industry & Commerce Association, which represents hotels and other businesses across the north of the city. He fears housing the homeless in hotels will put people off visiting Los Angeles.

“I wouldn’t want my kids around people that I’m not sure about. I wouldn’t want to be in an elevator with somebody who’s clearly having a mental break,” he says. “The idea that you can intermingle homeless folks with paying, normal guests just doesn’t work out.”…

If voters give the green light, every hotel in town – from a suburban Super 8 Motel to glitzy hostelries like the storied Biltmore – will be required to report vacancies and welcome homeless guests who have a voucher from the city. The hotels would be paid market-rate for the rooms. The measure would also have implications for developers, who would have to replace any housing knocked down to make way for new hotels.

CNN even spoke to one homeless person who benefitted from a similar program who thought the ballot initiative sounded like a bad idea.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” he says. “You know, there’s a lot of people with untreated mental health and some people do some damage to these poor buildings.”

The leader of the union who forced this onto the ballot maintains it’s a great idea but it’s also the case that his union is in the middle of contract negotiations with the hotels who oppose this plan. The hotels have even filed an unfair labor practice complaint over the union’s demand that hotels endorse the ballot measure.

Amid tense negotiations over new contracts for thousands of local hotel housekeepers, receptionists and cooks, a group of Southern California hotels filed an unfair labor practice charge accusing Unite Here Local 11 of striking over policy proposals that have “nothing to do” with the employees it represents.

The group has taken issue specifically with the union’s demands that hotels support housing initiatives, both politically and materially. In negotiations, the union has asked hotels to publicly endorse a measure set for the 2024 ballot that would require hotels in Los Angeles to rent vacant rooms to unhoused people. The union has also urged hotels to agree to impose a 7% fee on all guest room sales to create a new fund that would assist hospitality workers in obtaining affordable housing…

Keith Grossman, an attorney with Hirschfeld Kraemer, one of two firms representing the hotel coalition, said in an emailed statement Thursday that pushing for such provisions to be included in a contract settlement and striking over them is “not only unlawful, but it is also a real obstacle to reaching agreement on a contract.”

“If the union really wanted an agreement to help the employees, it would have dropped these issues long ago instead of taking employees out on strike over them,” Grossman said.

In theory you’d think the hotels would support this plan since it would guarantee they would never have any empty rooms. But of course the managers and owners know that filling rooms with people who have mental problems or drug problems is likely to lead to significant problems for the hotel, the staff and for other guests who may find themselves next door to someone who is literally off their meds and high as a kite. What if the homeless residents, who aren’t paying for the room, decide to hold a party and blast music all night? Could they be kicked out? Who would have to ask them to leave? It’s just a disaster waiting to happen in the short term but it’s even worse in the medium to long term:

“What the measure does is hurts our tourism industry, which we heavily rely on, in a time when we are getting ready for the Olympics,” said Councilman Joe Buscaino on Thursday. “This is the dumbest measure I’ve seen in my 10 year tenure as a City Council member. It’s the worst of all options as it relates to solving homelessness in the city of LA. It puts hotel workers in a position where they will become social workers.”

It will only take a few bad experiences for word to spread to avoid hotels in this part of town. Bookings will be canceled when people find out they may wind up next to a random selection of people from skid row. And if the number of vacant rooms goes up, the number of homeless tenants goes up as well. How long before there are more homeless people than tourists in some of these hotels? There’s probably no recovery from that.

On the other hand, you’d imagine the union representing the workers who would have to deal with these folks would be against this. If anyone is likely to wind up threatened or injured because of this plan, its probably the members of this union. So the fact that they are pushing this either means they are collectively very far left (possible) or using this as leverage against the hotels in the negotiations (also possible). Either way this is a bad idea.