Use Respect and Hospitality, Not Force, to Get Homeless Into Hotel Rooms

Inside Safe, the initiative created by new Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass to move unhoused people out of encampments into hotel and motel rooms and ultimately more permanent housing has recently come under fire for poor, unsanitary conditions, uncaring staff, lack of food, poor communication, and sometimes ridiculous policies. Mutual aid groups, and other advocacy organizations involved with the homeless have termed the program “Inside Starving” and established a website showing atrocious stories of incompetence and poor quality services from the program: http://www.insidestarving.com

This is a perfect example of how homeless service programs fail on the basics of customer experience and make themselves ineffective by not doing the little things right. It also shows the pervasive attitude of not treating unhoused people as equals which ultimately results in negative publicity, a bad reputation of services amongst the unhoused community, poor adoption of the services by unhoused people, reluctance to accept future services, and ultimately program failure. Just by following the same steps of hospitality one would show to a customer in the private sector, or even a guest in your own home and having a systemic attitude shifters towards such, we can make these programs actually work without having to resort to the use of force.

The episode is a little rough and ran longer than expected, so my apologies.

Notes:

Inside Safe program is way better than other efforts but could use some improvement to say the least

No food, jail-like conditions, very
unsanitary, roaches, etc., no toiletries, not able to go to their work

Someone's tent got thrown away and didn't get a room because he was in the hospital getting amputation surgery. This is who needs the help!

The homeless service people all ordered themselves food but didn't get food for anyone else

Homeless service providers should listen to marketers. We also make people do things they don't want to do, but we can't hold a gun to your head to make you buy something.

My approach includes both policy expertise and marketing and sales knowledge, which is somewhat uncommon among social service providers, who see their customer as donors only and those people who know only work with donors

Inside Safe's “customer” is seen as those adversely affected by encampments

The solution is not more coercion, it's better services!

Overall patronizing inconsiderate attitude, even if they want to help and care, this is part of the system

They wouldn't do this to someone they invited over their house for example

A decent meal is cheap! Anyone organizing some kind of event knows this.

Homeless communities stick together, have a form of solidarity, and inform each other.

Word of mouth spreads

It’s just like product reviews, but why don't we see it that way?

Capitalism makes it so that when we provide a service to one type of people we feel like we can do it badly, even when it’s easy to do it better.

Give them something nice! People are happy when you treat them (and feed them) well. Doesn’t take much more money than what you were already spending

There’s a major difference in how the private and public sectors do temporary housing. It’s not impossible to get it right. I got temporary housing through insurance. It was great. This isn't hard.

Make them feel good about their decision, like it's exclusive and a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity

Call staff "concierges" and little,stupid stuff like that, along with the substantive things that hospitality and human decency would call for.

Feed them! You do that at sales presentations to get them to talk to you. Give them the continental breakfast when you