Homeless Hotel Residents Brace for Next Move as NYC Weighs Changes to COVID Protections

The Department of Homeless Services (DHS) is re-evaluating its guidelines for sheltering older homeless adults and people with significant health problems that make them especially vulnerable to COVID-19, who can under the current rules access private or semi-private rooms. More than 170 such residents being housed at a Radisson Hotel in lower Manhattan will need to move out by early next month.

After a Year of Missed Opportunity, New York Revises Sputtering Hotel-to-Housing Plan

When COVID-19 hit, policymakers saw an opportunity: The city had interconnected affordable housing and homelessness crises; the city also had hundreds of empty hotels hemorrhaging cash. But a year after the state passed a law funding the conversion of hotels to affordable housing, not a single one has happened. The experience of the Paramount Hotel on West 46th Street illustrates why.