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EsKayNYC t1_j4qopzq wrote

It’s back to the 1980s when NYC turned beautiful pre-war hotels into SROs for homeless, destroying blocks and neighborhoods, and killing businesses in the area. Tourism dollars sustain NYC. We specially need tourism now with low office-space occupancy.

The migrant crisis is a real one. They need our help, but not with knee-jerk and short-sighted thinking. I’m not qualified to offer a solution, but seemingly neither is Mr. Mayor.

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[deleted] t1_j4qq86l wrote

How are hotel occupancy rates? Not being snide, I’m genuinely curious. I agree that we need tourism but last I heard hotels were still suffering with low occupancy post COVID. I’d prefer this over hotels shutting down.

(not to mention I kind of feel like comparing this to housing the homeless does a disservice to incoming immigrants. There are endemic problems with mental health etc among homeless populations, a lot of these migrants are just going to be people looking for a better life. Way more families, for one)

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EsKayNYC t1_j4qu8pc wrote

All good points! Again, I’m not an expert on this topic but remember the blight of the last such plan. Hotel occupancy seems to be on a rebound, at least in Manhattan. Major events are mostly back or starting to come back that previously put a strain on affordable hotel options. If the city actually starts enforcing AirBNB regulations, hotel occupancy demand will increase with all the illegal AirBNB housing going back into the long-term rental pool. A double win.

I guess a middle-ground option will be to find hotels and motels in the outskirts of the city and in Long Island and Northern suburbs. There are hotels and motels in greater financial needs there. The state needs to carry its share of the burden which is unfairly put on NYC by other states.

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Pool_Shark t1_j4s1hi4 wrote

The mayor of NYC doesn’t have justification over hotels in the suburbs.

Deblasio already turned a lot of hotels in the outer boros into homeless shelters so my guess is they needed to find other areas of the city to exploit

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Evening_Presence_927 t1_j4r4vxo wrote

> Again, I’m not an expert on this topic but remember the blight of the last such plan

So why the fuck should we listen to you if you aren’t an expert?

Do you even live in the city?

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protonmail_throwaway t1_j4qvthd wrote

But they are homeless…

Just because that one crazy guy that screams at you in the park is also homeless doesn’t make these immigrants any less homeless. It’s not a word used to describe one particular type of displaced person who makes the newspaper or shits on the sidewalk.

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[deleted] t1_j4qxh19 wrote

All I’m saying is that these arriving immigrants are a different population from the homeless in the 80s that were housed in pre-war hotels. Homeless shelters don’t have a good reputation even among the homeless population itself let alone among neighbors.

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protonmail_throwaway t1_j4qyr4s wrote

A lot of different shelters, and a lot of different people living in them. I just don’t see them as categorically all that different in this regard.

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Turtle_Shaft t1_j4qvui7 wrote

The hotels that were turned into sros were already at crackhouse levels before they started to get converted.

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