
Motel Living and Slowly Dying - fern12
https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/motel-living-and-slowly-dying/#!
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DoreenMichele
It's very well written, but feels a little like it doesn't quite make the
point it set out to make. It's a good read from the perspective of a richness
of language and insight into a lifestyle many here will not have familiarity
with. But, I don't know, when I was homeless, a hotel stay was a brief foray
back into civilization. It was a chance to get a proper shower in a proper
bathroom facility, unlike the homeless showers back in downtown San Diego that
I was all too happy to leave behind. It was a chance to watch a TV like normal
people do.

It sits a bit uncomfortably with me that the meaning (of hotel stays) for
those living precariously is cast in such negative terms. Perhaps that seems
necessary to motivate people to try to do something about the problem, but I
am not so sure that works. The pity with which other people clearly saw me
when I was on the street rarely motivated anyone to help me, though I was only
asking for help with figuring out how to effectively make money online. The
pity itself seemed to be a barrier to the connections and useful information I
desired. The pity seemed rather corrosive to my finances and not some means to
channel assistance my way.

While I can understand the strong feelings people have about how galling our
high rates of homelessness are, I am not so convinced that this framing is
particularly helpful to some cause of trying to make headway against such
things.

~~~
jpatokal
This recent story in the Atlantic does a good job of capturing the quiet
desperation of motel-homeless life.

 _They thought it would be a brief stay, but they ended up staying in various
hotels like the Red Roof Inn and the GuestHouse Inn for the next two and a
half years. All six of them would pile into one room, with two of the boys
sleeping on the floor and everyone vying for bathroom time. They could rarely
stay at a hotel longer than 28 days—many establishments have time limits—and
so would have to pack up their bags every few weeks and find a new place to
live. “I think the worst part of it was not having your privacy, your own
room, we all had to share one big room,” Karina told me. “And not having a
place to call home during Christmas.”_ ...

 _Moving into a place where they had a kitchen and some privacy was an almost
indescribable relief. Karina posted pictures of scrambled eggs she made on
Facebook, puzzling friends who didn’t know that the family had been homeless
for two and a half years, because being able to cook in her own kitchen again
filled her with joy._

[https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/12/the-
nev...](https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/12/the-neverending-
foreclosure/547181/?single_page=true)

~~~
DoreenMichele
I slept in a usually 7x7 tent for 5.7 years with my two adult special needs
sons.

I am not asserting that their quiet desperation is invalid. But please don't
dismiss my experience as invalid.

I do a lot of writing on things like homelessness and housing issues. I wish
tech giants would abandon their advocacy of UBI and replace it with trying to
solve affordable housing for this country. But I cannot begin to tell you what
a kick in the stomach it feels like for you to try to "educate" me on the
issue of homelessness here, like I have no clue whereof I speak.

~~~
deftturtle
I think they were just trying to contribute to the discussion. Why assume a
hostile position towards the comment?

~~~
DoreenMichele
If it is mere contribution to the discussion, it is quite badly handled. If
they did not intend to rebut me, they could have posted it as a top level
comment instead of as a reply. If they wished to engage me without coming
across as dismissive, the framing of it needs a lot of work.

Your comment also comes across as subtly dismissive and accusatory due to what
you choose to comment on here. If you only wish to engage in discussion, why
feel the need to criticize my reply? Why not say something constructive in
response to my top level comment above?

Women, people of color, the poor and other disenfranchised groups face this
sort of thing a great deal. It is rather maddening as it puts people in a no
win situation. Such groups get no respect. When they complain of it, it is yet
another thing to criticise them for.

It would be nice if the world stopped such insidious patterns.

~~~
adrianN
No offense, but I think you're misinterpreting a normal pattern of discussion
on this site. jpatokal's comment was pretty clearly not trying to dismiss your
experience as invalid but simply contributed a similar story.

~~~
musage
Just because it's normal here doesn't mean it's not what it is.

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haroldp
Reno Nevada is a little infamous for it's strips of shabby motels leftover
from the 50s and 60s when it was a Mecca for people to get a quick marriage or
divorce. The matrimony industry is gone but the motels are still here. People
in town hate them because they are old and run down and ugly and occupied by
our seedier citizens. They attract drugs and prostitution, as you might
imagine. Everyone wants to get rid of them, and indeed three or four were
razed this last summer.

But as the story points out, shitty old motels are an _important_ rung on the
ladder between homelessness or living in a shelter, and being able to afford
one or two thousand dollars to move into an apartment.

This year our little "angel tree" that exclusively services those old motels
has over 160 kids on it. I hate to think where those kids would be without the
old motels.

Tearing them down does not make the problem go away. It makes it worse.

~~~
barry-cotter
> Tearing them down does not make the problem go away. It makes it worse.

The problem these people are trying to solve is not that those children are
trying to solve is not that those people are living in a crap situation, it is
that those people are living near them. See NIMBY, banning Single Room
Occupancy hotels, minimum lot sizes, maximum occupancy, minimum square
footage, etc.

Middle class people ban choices they wouldn’t make, news at 11.

~~~
mjevans
It isn't just the middle class. The wealthy don't want anyone (relatively)
worse off living next to them either.

One of the points I think a home (or apartment, etc) should make is keeping
unwanted noises on one side of it's walls. Outside noises out, inside noises
in.

It very much annoys me how easy it is for the un-thoughtful to make the lives
of those around them hell.

~~~
barry-cotter
No, it isn’t just the middle class. The rich don’t make other people’s
preferred choices illegal though because they can afford to live somewhere
they don’t have to deal with them. The middle class make those choices
illegal, the rich buy their way out of dealing with them.

~~~
dragonwriter
> The rich don’t make other people’s preferred choices illegal though because
> they can afford to live somewhere they don’t have to deal with them.

While they can afford to do that, they can also often afford to buy the laws
in the place they prefer to live for reasons other than the pre-existing laws,
and they often do so instead of relocating.

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peatmoss
Oof. That bit about teachers pulling kids aside to see if they had a winter
coat is 100% truth. When I was a kid, there were basically never any school
cancellations due to snow. The reason? The calculus in Montana was that it was
safer to risk traveling on terrifying roads than it was to risk kids being
home, alone, with no heat, and maybe nothing to eat.

~~~
jopsen
wow,

to bed fair, if snow is common then the roads and infrastructure should be
aimed at handling it, right?

~~~
greaseball
As a Canadian who's spent a few years in the southern states, I can say that
the difference in infrastructure here does help reduce the risks of road
accidents when there's snow. In the south the entire city shuts down because
the people there don't have the snow plows, road salt, and winter tires to
deal with it. However, in a really bad storm the reduced visibility and
slippery roads can still make your drive very dangerous.

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tomalpha
In the UK we don’t have motels as such. We tend to have Bed And Breakfast
guest houses. Much smaller affairs. They can end up having the same use though
as we have a growing precariat too.

There is some, perhaps better, provision for state funded emergency housing
over here but claiming any kind of perfection would be very wide of the mark.
It can still leave whole families in single rooms for long periods of time.

[https://england.shelter.org.uk/housing_advice/homelessness/t...](https://england.shelter.org.uk/housing_advice/homelessness/temporary_housing_if_youre_homeless/bed_and_breakfasts_b_and_bs_private_short-
term_housing)

Edit: I missed out acknowledging the author’s talents as a writer, and the
plight of those (on downward or maybe as another commenter points out, upwards
trends). This was a very moving piece. The picture it paints is captivating
and bleak.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
Youth hostels serve this role in much of Europe. The Lausanne hostel would
have a drunk homeless guy living there, the police would bring him in and pay
for his stay. He reaked, it was difficult for me to share a dorm room with
him. Good times.

~~~
icc97
Youth Hostels are a pretty good solution I think. They're designed to be
simple and cheap from the start, but further I think they're designed to be
durable and low maintenance too. This means you can fairly sure of a basic
level of quality. Unlike numerous B&Bs or run down hotels.

I stayed in two separate youth hostels in Switzerland. One was amazing, the
other was basically a camp for American students with speakers to wake you up
each morning.

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FussyZeus
This is an especially hard read given what's happening right now to the tax
system. I wish more people understood just how easy it is to end up in those
kind of circumstances, but most seem either secure enough that they don't see
it as a realistic outcome for them or too frightened to consider just how
close to the razor's edge they themselves are to accept it.

~~~
Turing_Machine
The post below yours got flagged into oblivion, but I think it raises an
important issue.

Nationwide, less than 30% of the money spent on welfare actually winds up as
cash in the hands of the needy it's supposedly benefiting. Most of it is spent
on other things (some of which are no doubt good, others of which may not be
so good). Surely one can suggest taking a hard look at these other
expenditures without being accused of taking bread out of the mouths of
children?

[https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/most-welfare-dollars-
do...](https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/most-welfare-dollars-dont-go-
directly-to-poor-people-anymore/)

In California (one of the better states) only about 45% of the money
supposedly spent to help poor people actually winds up in their hands. Some
states are much, much worse.

The guy who got flagged suggested (in a rather combative manner, true) that
too much of the welfare budget is spent on the salaries of bureaucrats. I
don't know about you, but > 50% overhead seems like too much to me.

~~~
DoreenMichele
_The post below yours got flagged into oblivion, but I think it raises an
important issue._

My impression was that it showed up dead. I vouched for it, to no avail.

Assuming you mean this one:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15848548](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15848548)

~~~
dredmorbius
History:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15754234](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15754234)

~~~
DoreenMichele
Ugh.

Thanks.

------
Animats
The next generation of this will be WeLive, the residential branch of WeWork.
They're setting up dorms in old office buildings.[1] Once those become run
down and are passed on to low rent operators, they'll be tomorrow's SRO
hotels.

[1] [https://www.washingtonian.com/2017/05/19/what-its-like-to-
li...](https://www.washingtonian.com/2017/05/19/what-its-like-to-live-in-
welive-crystal-citys-dorm-for-adults/)

------
Overtonwindow
My greatest fear is eeking out an existence while I wait to die.

~~~
icc97
Have you made any plans to avoid this?

~~~
Overtonwindow
Yes. I purchased a home and turned it into a rental, bringing a few hundred
dollars of profit each month. I have a Roth IRA that I invest in, and I work
very hard to stay out of debt.

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fergie
I'm so glad that the HN community still promotes quality long-form journalism.
Long may it continue.

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diebir
Billings, MT is a horrible shithole. I don't know of any other town along any
major road between Colorado and any other place west, where I would have less
liked to stop. Pollution, chemical industry, grim setting, run down
downtown... The weather is awful too, summers too hot, winters too cold.

~~~
SparkleBunny
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butte,_Montana#Berkeley_Pit](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butte,_Montana#Berkeley_Pit)

~~~
24gttghh
Dear god. That could contaminate the entire Columbia River watershed in a few
years...

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groundCode
On the subject of motel living, Willy Vlautin’s book This Motel Life is an
excellent read.

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elboru
Could someone help a non-American to understand? I've read people can stay
years in motels, how is that possible? is renting a house in the US that
expensive? or, is renting a motel that cheap? maybe I'm missing another
variable?

In perspective renting a cheap Motel in my city for one month would be the
equivalent of renting a fairly big middle class house.

~~~
garethsprice
Motels in the US can be extremely cheap, maybe $30/night. This makes a month
comparable to a low-end apartment - but the advantage is that they are highly
transient - as long as you've got $30, you've got a bed for the night. No
contract, no lease, etc.

Moving into an apartment usually requires a month (or more) deposit,
potentially a credit check and employment verification. There's a growing
precariat in the US who cannot provide this, so motels provide a solution in a
society that operates on free-market principles and has little social safety
net.

"The Florida Project" is a good film that dives into this part of American
society a little bit. As an immigrant who started out in this country near
that run down part of the US-192 in Florida, it's spot on.

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petethomas
Available on archive.org:
[http://web.archive.org/web/20171205060015/https://lareviewof...](http://web.archive.org/web/20171205060015/https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/motel-
living-and-slowly-dying/#)!

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ggm
Housing the homeless in hotels across the UK since Margaret Thatcher...

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fpisfun
Life is what you make of it

