'Hotel Hell': Hospitality union under fire for push to house homeless in empty rooms
A California hospitality union came under fire by an accountability nonprofit for its push to house homeless people in empty hotel rooms.
A union transparency nonprofit is launching an advertising campaign to oppose a Los Angeles hospitality union's push to force hotels to house homeless people.
The Center for Union Facts (CUF) is launching an ad campaign on several major networks to slam L.A. hospitality union Unite Here Local 11 for its push for the Responsible Hotels Ordinance.
The ordinance, which Local 11 likened to the pandemic-era Project Roomkey, would "provide temporary lodging for unhoused families and individuals."
The Center for Union Facts is launching an ad campaign on several major networks to slam Los Angeles hospitality union Unite Here Local 11 for its push for the Responsible Hotels Ordinance. (Ringo Chiu / AFP via Getty Images / File)
The ad titled "Hotel Hell: Local 11’s Plan to Turn Hotels into Homeless Shelters," kicks off with a homeless man riffling through a trash can outside a hotel with the narrator warning that the union's push "wants to turn hotels into homeless shelters."
The ad cuts to the homeless man begging for change outside a family's hotel room as the narrator says the "union's idea would be to force hotels to provide rooms to the homeless, putting tourists and paying guests at risk and exposing hotel employees to hazardous situations."
"Hungry?" the homeless man asks a hotel worker as she walks in on him cooking food over a hot plate on the ground.
CUF communications director Charlyce Bozzello told Fox News Digital that "Local 11's plan to force hotels to function as makeshift homeless shelters threatens the safety and well-being of guests, hotel staff and homeless individuals themselves."
"It also raises an unavoidable question: Who would want to stay at a hotel when their neighbor may be a potentially dangerous individual?" Bozzello said.
The ad cuts to the homeless man begging for change outside a family's hotel room as the narrator says the "union's idea would be to force hotels to provide rooms to the homeless, putting tourists and paying guests at risk and exposing hotel employees to hazardous situations." (Fox 11 Los Angeles)
"Hotel employees are not equipped to handle the challenges of housing the homeless, including situations that include drug use or mental illness. The union should be protecting its members from this potential danger, not forcing it upon them."
The CUF also released a website alongside the ad – HomelessHotels.com – highlighting the dangers and risks of turning over empty hotel rooms to homeless people.
"California launched a nearly identical voucher program called Project Roomkey and the results were disastrous," the website reads. "Reports of deaths, destruction, and workers being exposed to bodily fluids ran rampant."
"New York experienced similar results with its homeless hotel program as crime increased and calls to emergency services, including police, increased exponentially," it continues.
The website also noted that this year "workers at the L.A. Grand Hotel – a homeless hotel – described being exposed to illness, bodily fluids, violent incidents, and witnessing property destruction" and that in "2021, it was reported that the conditions of a Vallejo hotel rapidly deteriorated after becoming a homeless hotel."
"Government workers at the hotel described human biowaste (defecation) in the hallways along with urine, vomit, needles, and glass," the website reads. "Conditions were so bad that the government contractor running the hotel threatened to leave."
HomelessHotels.com also wrote that "homeless hotel programs" in California (and also New York) saw "hundreds of homeless" ousted from "hotels in Sacramento due to criminal activity and violence."
The CUF also released a website alongside the ad – HomelessHotels.com – highlighting the dangers and risks of turning over empty hotel rooms to homeless people. (Hans Gutknecht / MediaNews Group / Los Angeles Daily News via Getty Images / File)
The website also noted that "two level 3 (most dangerous) sex offenders were found at the one New York hotel, including a former member of New York's most wanted fugitive list."
"A convicted killer staying at a Sheraton hotel in New York attacked an elderly woman in broad daylight," the website reads.
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"49 Project Roomkey participants died in Los Angeles while participating in the program," it continues. "Eight people died in one Los Angeles hotel."
Local 11 did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital's request for comment.
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