With travel still stuck in the Delta doldrums, many hotels have fallen on hard times. Some policymakers see a chance to take advantage of the sector’s struggles by converting hotels into permanent housing for the homeless. California has led the way with Project Home Key, an extension of an early-pandemic experiment that has now led to more than 6,000 permanent apartments for the homeless in converted hotels, with another $2.9 billion coming into the program from the federal stimulus bill from earlier this year. Eric Adams, the presumptive next mayor of New York City, has said he plans to convert hotels to supportive housing, and other cities have experimented with using hotels to house the homeless as well.
Last week, I spoke with Noah Kazis, a legal fellow at New York University’s Furman Center and one of the authors, along with Elisabeth Appel and Matthew Murphy, of a recent white paper that lays out some of the challenges and opportunities for hotel-to-housing conversion in New York City. Our conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Read Full Article »