It's very well written, but feels a little like it doesn't quite make the point it set out to make. It's a good read from the perspective of a richness of language and insight into a lifestyle many here will not have familiarity with. But, I don't know, when I was homeless, a hotel stay was a brief foray back into civilization. It was a chance to get a proper shower in a proper bathroom facility, unlike the homeless showers back in downtown San Diego that I was all too happy to leave behind. It was a chance to watch a TV like normal people do.<p>It sits a bit uncomfortably with me that the meaning (of hotel stays) for those living precariously is cast in such negative terms. Perhaps that seems necessary to motivate people to try to do something about the problem, but I am not so sure that works. The pity with which other people clearly saw me when I was on the street rarely motivated anyone to help me, though I was only asking for help with figuring out how to effectively make money online. The pity itself seemed to be a barrier to the connections and useful information I desired. The pity seemed rather corrosive to my finances and not some means to channel assistance my way.<p>While I can understand the strong feelings people have about how galling our high rates of homelessness are, I am not so convinced that this framing is particularly helpful to some cause of trying to make headway against such things.
Reno Nevada is a little infamous for it's strips of shabby motels leftover from the 50s and 60s when it was a Mecca for people to get a quick marriage or divorce. The matrimony industry is gone but the motels are still here. People in town hate them because they are old and run down and ugly and occupied by our seedier citizens. They attract drugs and prostitution, as you might imagine. Everyone wants to get rid of them, and indeed three or four were razed this last summer.<p>But as the story points out, shitty old motels are an <i>important</i> rung on the ladder between homelessness or living in a shelter, and being able to afford one or two thousand dollars to move into an apartment.<p>This year our little "angel tree" that exclusively services those old motels has over 160 kids on it. I hate to think where those kids would be without the old motels.<p>Tearing them down does not make the problem go away. It makes it worse.
Oof. That bit about teachers pulling kids aside to see if they had a winter coat is 100% truth. When I was a kid, there were basically never any school cancellations due to snow. The reason? The calculus in Montana was that it was safer to risk traveling on terrifying roads than it was to risk kids being home, alone, with no heat, and maybe nothing to eat.
In the UK we don’t have motels as such. We tend to have Bed And Breakfast guest houses. Much smaller affairs. They can end up having the same use though as we have a growing precariat too.<p>There is some, perhaps better, provision for state funded emergency housing over here but claiming any kind of perfection would be very wide of the mark. It can still leave whole families in single rooms for long periods of time.<p><a href="https://england.shelter.org.uk/housing_advice/homelessness/temporary_housing_if_youre_homeless/bed_and_breakfasts_b_and_bs_private_short-term_housing" rel="nofollow">https://england.shelter.org.uk/housing_advice/homelessness/t...</a><p>Edit: I missed out acknowledging the author’s talents as a writer, and the plight of those (on downward or maybe as another commenter points out, upwards trends). This was a very moving piece. The picture it paints is captivating and bleak.
This is an especially hard read given what's happening right now to the tax system. I wish more people understood just how easy it is to end up in those kind of circumstances, but most seem either secure enough that they don't see it as a realistic outcome for them or too frightened to consider just how close to the razor's edge they themselves are to accept it.
The next generation of this will be WeLive, the residential branch of WeWork. They're setting up dorms in old office buildings.[1] Once those become run down and are passed on to low rent operators, they'll be tomorrow's SRO hotels.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.washingtonian.com/2017/05/19/what-its-like-to-live-in-welive-crystal-citys-dorm-for-adults/" rel="nofollow">https://www.washingtonian.com/2017/05/19/what-its-like-to-li...</a>
Billings, MT is a horrible shithole. I don't know of any other town along any major road between Colorado and any other place west, where I would have less liked to stop. Pollution, chemical industry, grim setting, run down downtown... The weather is awful too, summers too hot, winters too cold.
Could someone help a non-American to understand? I've read people can stay years in motels, how is that possible? is renting a house in the US that expensive? or, is renting a motel that cheap? maybe I'm missing another variable?<p>In perspective renting a cheap Motel in my city for one month would be the equivalent of renting a fairly big middle class house.
Available on archive.org: <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20171205060015/https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/motel-living-and-slowly-dying/#" rel="nofollow">http://web.archive.org/web/20171205060015/https://lareviewof...</a>!