From Homelessness to Hotel Living during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Background and Purpose. When COVID-19 swept through New York City in 2020, the conditions in congregate homeless shelters, where many residents have pre-existing health conditions, became untenable. Aided by federal funds, the City moved thousands of people experiencing homelessness (PEH) into hotel rooms and adopted enhanced COVID mitigation measures in congregate shelters. Despite emergent evidence that COVID infection rates were low among the medically vulnerable shelter residents moved to hotels and the fact that hotel residents had access to on-site social services, a small contingent of New Yorkers, including Mayor de Blasio, alleged that hotels were inappropriate sites for service provision to PEH, contributing to increasing pressure to return hotel residents to congregate shelters. With few exceptions, PEH were excluded from this discourse. This study represents an attempt to foreground the voices of PEH moved into hotels in the scholarly discourse and to underscore some of the challenges associated with conducting qualitative research with PEH during a pandemic. The researchers aimed to answer three questions: 1) how do residents compare hotel rooms to their prior residences? 2) how do hotel rooms satisfy residents’ needs? and 3) Do hotel rooms facilitate a transition to permanent housing?

Methods. Twenty, hour-hour long, semi-structured, telephonic interviews were performed with residents of a lower-end residency hotel in NYC between April and October 2021. A mobile outreach team moved participants into hotel rooms from the following locations: the street (n=12), other hotels (n=4), congregate shelters (n=2), and undisclosed locations (n=2). Hotel residents were purposively sampled using flyers distributed by agency staff. All 100 hotel residents receiving services from the agency were eligible. Interviews were audio recorded and coded verbatim. Data were analyzed using thematic analysis (e.g., Hsieh & Shannon, 2005; Padgett, 2016).

Findings. Participants generally preferred the hotel to their previous living arrangements, citing enhanced feelings of autonomy, stability, safety, and security in their private hotel rooms. However, participants also noted several challenges associated with hotel living, including the absence of kitchens, limited room furnishings, and security practices.

Conclusions and Implications. Study findings illustrate that hotel rooms are a promising alternative to conventional shelter beds. Hotel residents were able to regain some semblance of having a home of their own, even one they were aware was temporary. The findings also suggest that addressing many of the hotel's limitations are attainable (e.g., by procuring furniture, installing kitchenettes, and retraining security). COVID-19 precautions complicated several aspects of the study methodology. Agency staff’s duties to residents sometimes took precedence over study recruitment. In response, the researchers extended the timeline for data collection by several months to gather a sufficient sample, distributed a second wave of flyers, and closely communicated with the agency’s program director. A reliance upon telephonic interview modalities might have deprived the researchers of nonverbal which would have helped to contextualize participants’ responses and potentially impact coding and analysis. Researchers conducting this type of research should weigh the potential costs and benefits of using video conferencing technology to conduct participant interviews.