When Home Won’t Let You Stay
From London to San Francisco, Berlin to Tokyo, there have been few global constants in the fight against COVID-19. Whether evolving health guidance at the local level or highly variable “reopening” plans, there has been a single challenge that persists across culture and borders: homeless populations’ high vulnerability to COVID-19. The COVID-19 pandemic has manifested in an even more daunting situation for people who lack stable shelter, access to proper hygiene, and basic food supplies. A recent study co-authored by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of California Los Angeles painted a dark picture of the crisis: estimating 40% of those experiencing homelessness could become infected with COVID-19. Worsening the situation for the homeless are higher rates of comorbidities, 20% to 30% of the U.S. homeless population has obstructive pulmonary disease — twice as high as the general adult population. All of these factors culminate in those who are homeless being twice as likely to be hospitalized and two to four times more likely to die of COVID-19 than a member of the general population. These numbers seem dystopian but fail to consider a further threat: impending financial catastrophe. As unemployment reaches historic proportions, and with rent and mortgage payments looming, the ranks of the homeless in America could swell enormously.
“All of these factors culminate in those who are homeless being twice as likely to be hospitalized and two to four times more likely to die of COVID-19 than a member of the general population.”
Governments have taken a host of actions to mitigate the impacts of COVID-19 on the homeless, like installing portable toilets and hand-washing stations in encampments, but there was perhaps no more widely reported step taken then the use of hotels to reduce the density of crowded shelters. Infamously, one of the most striking images of the pandemic thus far could be found in Las Vegas: where dozens of people slept within taped white squares on pavement in front of some of the 150,000 empty hotel rooms in the city. Housing the homeless in unused hotels has been touted by many as a common-sense solution to both provide critical shelter for the most desperate while simultaneously aiding a beleaguered hotel industry. Though the use of hotels for mitigating the impacts of crisis is not only a common-sense solution, but also one with a long history. The use of hotels for the mitigation of COVID-19 is only the next chapter in that long history; one need not look far for the most recent deployment of hotels as sanctuary.
The ongoing conflicts in Syria and Libya saw a large exodus of refugees crossing the Mediterranean Sea. Refugees fled violent government crackdowns on public demonstrations. At the peak of the crisis, upwards of 100,000 people were upended from their homes each week, many landing on the shores of Greece and the Balkans. Hotels in these regions were forced to transform rapidly to support the sudden surge of those applying for asylum. In the city of Athens, hotels built to house athletes and spectators for the Olympic games a decade earlier were revitalized to offer shelter and job opportunities to refugees.
The success of the model in Greece preceded its adoption across the globe, from the United States to northern Europe. Large hotel chains suddenly came to expect contracts from their host governments to house refugees ahead of their, more permanent, resettlement. In fact, many were enticed by the higher occupancy rates when co-opted for refugee resettlement. In Berlin alone, dozens of hotels won contracts to provide shelter to refugees arriving from the Mediterranean. Upon refugees arrival, many were provided job training to run the hotels themselves. Not only were these trainings valuable for the hotel, but also equipped refugees with credentials to more effectively integrate into their new societies. What are the lessons of a refugee crisis a decade earlier than the first COVID-19 case? Long before a global pandemic preceded plummeting tourism, hotels were still eager and capable to mobilize in crisis.
In more recent news, the world has seen hotels such as Brighton’s Grand Hotel in the United Kingdom (once famous for being the site of a bombing by the IRA) open its doors — free of charge — to National Health Service (NHS) staff. In New York, one of the world’s epicenters of COVID-19, the St Regis Hotel and Plaza Hotel became field hospitals for non-critical patients. On the other side of the globe, the French government offered hotel rooms to those vulnerable of becoming victims of domestic abuse. The use of hotels in crisis itself spread around the globe.
Though the mobilization of the hotel is not limited to providing sanctuary, the storied history of the hotel as crisis infrastructure extends to wartime — from overt military assets to refuge for media covering conflict. The glamorous hotels in the Lebanese capital city of Beirut were at the center of the country’s civil war, mobilizing tens of thousands of fighters and resulting in thousands of casualties in the fight for their strategic heights over the city. Ending with the start of the Lebanese conflict, hotels also stood at the center of the US conflict in Vietnam: where hotels gained fame for hosting journalists and military leaders as shells fell just outside.
The diverse array of applications for hotels should not come as a surprise, but instead as a feature of the industry. Hotels are built atop self-sustaining systems which feature generators, large refrigeration units, food stockpiles, water tanks and supply chains. By extension the self-contained nature of the hotel room, which can be serviced with minimal social contact, has made its deployment against COVID-19 a particularly potent weapon. In fact, some five-star hotels have even begun to offer two-week “quarantine” packages tailored to foreign nationals returning home — allowing them to quarantine in luxury. These structures which contain the capacity for their own sufficiency give owners and management flexibility in responding to a menu of crises. For that reason, the mobilization of the hotel is almost limitless: most famously exemplified by the use of the Riyadh Ritz-Carlton as a prison for Saudi elites in 2017.
Perhaps the lesson to learn from the adaptability of the hotel is, more than many appreciate, their importance to the social fabric. In the midst of our current crisis, they’ve become a vital component in the containment of COVID-19 and continue to be indispensable resources saving lives. In the best of times and the worst of times, we can count on the hotel. Soon enough they will return to the norms of leisure and hospitality we’ve come to expect from them — ready to mobilize for their next crisis.
