From Homelessness to Hotel Living During the COVID-19 Pandemic

We explored life in a hotel where unhoused individuals were accommodated during the COVID-19 pandemic. We conducted hour-long semi-structured interviews with twenty residents of a lodging hotel in New York City to: (1) compare their current living situation with prior experiences of homelessness; (2) address how current needs were being met; and (3) assess how hotel living might facilitate residents' transitions to more permanent housing. Although residents were unhappy with some hotel characteristics (e.g. inability to prepare food; sparse furnishings; burdensome security practices), they preferred the hotel to their previous living situations (the streets, in most cases) as hotel rooms offered autonomy, stability, and safety behind locked doors. We utilized the concept of ontological security to guide our analysis of these interview data. Building off this analysis, we argue that homeless services should directly involve people experiencing homelessness to develop residences that are more responsive to their individual needs.