Hotel Apartments

[ysabetwordsmith]

Small Town Hotel Becomes a Safe Haven in an Expensive World

Feb 20, 2024-- In Little Current, Ontario, Canada, the owners of a local hotel have transformed their lodgings into affordable apartments for those struggling to make ends meet. Denise, "D" as she's lovingly called, was an employee of the Anchor Inn for over 15 years when she and her partner purchased the property in 2017.


Pay attention because this is replicable in many places. Lots of towns have more hotel or motel space than they need. A room typically includes a bed and a full bathroom. Often there is a little sitting area and sometimes a kitchenette. In other words, it's an efficiency apartment. Where two rooms are linked by a connecting door, you could leave one as a bedroom and turn the other into a kitchen-dining-living room. A business hotel will have some suites that are literally apartments, with one or more bedrooms, a living room, and a full kitchen. Usually the facility has some common amenities including a nice lobby/lounge, which sometimes has brunch eatery, some meeting rooms, a gym, and a swimming pool. Some have a lot more than that, up to a whole amenity floor. If not, you have the option of turning some of the rentable rooms into amenity rooms, such as for childcare. You could put a craft room or sport lounge on each floor for the residents to gather since private living space is tight.

This will work best in small towns, which very frequently have more hotel space than they need. If the zoning laws don't allow single-room-occupancy then you can just change them because any problem people made is a problem that people can solve. Zones only exist because people say they do. If your town has a hotel standing empty and people who need affordable housing, then use what you have.

However, if you have a city that's being proactive about affordable housing, this may work there too. It's especially helpful if you need to tear down slums and build something livable: buy a hotel, shift people from the first building there, build the replacement, move people in, and from there you can knock one, build one because you have space to put the displaced people during the build phase.

Hotels also work great for housing refugees or internally displaced persons. Over Terramagne, you can see examples of this in "A Matter of Balance" with Syrian refugees arriving and "Fresh Springs Break Out in Dry Places" when Ibrahim suggests taking in refugees from the Big One.

Comments

[greghousesgf]

The hotel room I stayed at the weekend of my niece's wedding was bigger than my apt and had a couple of things my apt doesn't have, a porch and a fireplace. The only things it didn't have that my apt does are an oven and a bathtub, and I don't care about the bathtub because I prefer showers anyway. The hotel room TV was bigger than my TV too.

Yes ...

[ysabetwordsmith]

Especially if you can buy the hotel with everything in it, that's a great setup for refugees because it already has beds, linens, usually a table and chairs, viewscreen, a minifridge and maybe a microwave or toaster oven, often a coffeepot, etc.

However, the trend toward not offering bathtubs in hotels is a serious detriment for many people who need a sit-down bathing experience (and no, a shower seat doesn't solve that problem unless the controls are ADA height too) and especially families with children. But it's a lot easier to retrofit a bathroom with a tub than it is to install a whole new bathroom.

Re: Yes ...

[see_also_friend]

If the kids are fairly small, you can buy purpose made children's tubs. I have also seen some rather interesting improvised tubs: inflatable pool inflated in the base of a standing shower, a big plastic tupperware tub, giant cooking pot (during a snowstorm; the parent had to melt snow to have hot water).

Re: Yes ...

[ysabetwordsmith]

Babies and even toddlers you can wash in a sink. But preschool and early gradeschool it's hard without a real bathtub, and most kids aren't reliable at bathing alone until 7 or 8. And if you have a young family with several kids, the lack of tub becomes a real hardship because you can't easily plop them in together, you have to kludge something and that usually means washing each one alone.

Re: Yes ...

[see_also_friend]

I haven't raised kids, and grew up as a singleton kid, so 'bathe kids in a group' isn't something I'd automatically think of.

I guess that the hotels are mostly designed for adults, and most of the people who would tubs can usually skip the bath for one night, so most people aren't complaining?

[see_also_friend]

This is a good idea. Perhaps if it seems feasible around here I should write a letter to the city council. We currently have a 'homelessness problem' that keeps getting mentioned in the papers, with a lot of handwringing all around.

[ravan]

If I ever win the lottery I want to buy an older hotel that isn't getting enough business and convert it to affordable studios. It always saddens me when they tear down SRO hotels and put luxury condos in their place.

Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

>> If I ever win the lottery I want to buy an older hotel that isn't getting enough business and convert it to affordable studios. <<

Good plan.

>> It always saddens me when they tear down SRO hotels and put luxury condos in their place.<<

America's housing crisis is wholly manufactured -- first by refusing to pay a living wage, and second because developers want to get rich rather than build what people actually need. So there is all this luxury crap but a majority of people who aren't rich are rent-burdened. It's a disgrace.

Re: Thoughts

[viridian5]

It's a big problem in New York City. We have a massive housing and affordability crisis, yet we constantly see old buildings getting torn down to put up tall glass apartment boxes that almost no one can afford. Then our politicians blame NIMBY that we don't want more, denser housing buildings put up when in actuality we're tired of losing places we actually use in favor of apartments that could only be some rich person's second or third apartment, if they sell at all.

Re: Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

The rich people are going to find themselves in the same boat as several other cities already are: namely, they become unable to hire menial or low-wage workers because nobody can afford to live in the city or even within driving distance on those wages. So they either have to pony up housing for their employees, or clean their own toilets. I have no sympathy.

Re: Thoughts

[kengr]

A few decades back they tore down several SROs in the downtown area to put in a federal courthouse and federal offices, as well as some parking garages to serve them.

At the time it was reported that they were supposed to put in low cost housing to replace the units in question. I'm not sure if they ever did, and wouldn't be at all surprised if any they put in are someplace inconvenient as hell.

[siliconshaman]

Hmm. I know of a brand-new never-been-used Travel Lodge that's sitting fully furnished but closed, empty and unlikely to ever be used, thanks to the Tories cancelling the northern leg of the new HS2 railway (and thus leaving the hotel high & dry without a reason for existing)

It's on the outskirts of Leeds, which has a chronic lack of housing, and I think I might know who to send an email to, to suggest this idea.

If it gets picked up, that's 300+ apartments easy...

Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

>> Hmm. I know of a brand-new never-been-used Travel Lodge that's sitting fully furnished but closed, empty and unlikely to ever be used, thanks to the Tories cancelling the northern leg of the new HS2 railway (and thus leaving the hotel high & dry without a reason for existing) <<

Ugh, people are so inept and wasteful.

I hadn't really thought of "stranded" new hotels like this, but it's a great category.

Same with strip malls or office buildings if they are the type where each unit has a bathroom. You'd probably need to add a shower in each, unless the employee one in the back has that, but it's not hard once there's already a half-bath in place. If there's a closed office area in back, that becomes a bedroom; if not, it's easy to build interior walls or even just make "walls" with tall bookcases or freestanding closet modules. You'd need to add a kitchen, but there are one-piece kitchenette inserts made for apartments. And the whole front is usually picture windows.

Hmm, the view depends on whether there's any landscaping yet (some have green strips for flowers and trees) or it's all pavement. Honestly I'd leave the nice wide sidewalks. You'd have a fabulously accessible place with all roll-in units, especially if you make all the new showers roll-in ones. All the units are open floor plan unless you build interior walls -- and if you're making "rooms" with bookcases, those can be moved as desired. You could turn most of the parking lot into a wheelchair park, skatepark, food truck park, or use it for booth events like a farmer's market or flea market. Save some parking for residents and guests, then either tear up part of the pavement for landscaping (expensive but good for drainage) or build roll-under raised beds for a residential community garden.

Speaking of drainage, where's the borrow pit or runoff pond for all that pavement? It's likely nearby, though it may be on a different property. If it's on this one, however, for a very little extra money you could turn it into a fabulous park and probably gain more than you spent in increased property value. 1) Put out at least one picnic table and trash can, preferably on a path with a concrete pad. If you want to get fancy, put them in a pavilion and maybe add a grill. 2) Run a boardwalk to the pond and add a pier that people can roll or walk out on with a bench at the end. 3) Put a few native plants around the pond, like willows or cattails. If you want to get fancy, make a riparian guild. You don't need to landscape the whole pond because natives will spread. 4) If you want to get fancy, add some fingerling fish such as bluegill, crappie, bass, or catfish (depending on pond size) so residents can fish. Amphibians will add themselves.

Depending on how much space you have, you might want to save a slot or two for business. Our local outlet mall, which is emitting its death rattle, has dozens of slots. Originally it had a food court but that barely lasted a few months. I think the playground is still there, though. Many strip malls are smaller, just 4-8 units, but sometimes those are huge and could be subdivided into multiple apartments. Another option would be to put down modular outbuildings, which is often done for things like a hotdog stand. Then residents would have live-work options as well as useful businesses to visit.

Wow, this is turning into a great neighborhood. :D It's the kind of thing that Boss Blaster would do. Right, I'm saving these notes for the South Haymarket expansion of neighborhood revitalization after the Big One.

>> It's on the outskirts of Leeds, which has a chronic lack of housing, and I think I might know who to send an email to, to suggest this idea.<<

Do it! Even if that person doesn't pursue it personally, they might know who else to ask.

Feel free to throw in some "what to do with the parking lot" ideas since residential use may need less than a business. Hmm, and check the ground floor -- some hotels have like a restaurant or salon or necessities shop in addition to things like a pool and meeting rooms. The huge ones are basically self-contained villages.

>> If it gets picked up, that's 300+ apartments easy... <<

Even if they're just bedsits, that's a huge improvement, and some hotels have larger suites.

Re: Thoughts

[see_also_friend]

For parking lots... I've heard of raised bed gardens and food trucks. Has anyone ever done a trailer-garden?

You could move it around for availible parking, good sun, etc... and if selling plants, you can drive it to farmer's markets and such. (Might have to use a tarp, covered wagon style).

Re: Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

I've seen trailer gardens full of mums and such at fall displays, which are often built and then taken down after a few weeks. The trailer makes it easier to move all those heavy pots.

[kellan_the_tabby]

I was SO ANGRY when an old motel closed back where I used to live in New Mexico, & instead of doing something USEFUL with it, they brought in a backhoe or something & used it to knock down the front wall of each room. So homeless people wouldn't squat there; that's what I read in the paper when I went looking. ARGH.

Course this is the same town where, right at the beginning of the plague, the mayor claimed that 'his people' hadn't brought the plague to the Navajo; the Navajo had brought it to 'his people'. Pretty fascinating thing for a white guy to say in a town that's 60% Navajo. They started calling him Mayor Plague Blankets after that.

[duskpeterson]

Speaking as someone who has lived in a motel for a year now, I think the world would be a better place if there was a revival of apartment hotels. Preferably affordable ones.

(The Wikipedia article really doesn't give a good sense of how mainstream a housing solution this was in the mid-twentieth century.)

In reality, cheap motels function as such. But would be nice if governments recognized this fact, and accepted a motel/hotel address as a permanent address.

Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

>>Speaking as someone who has lived in a motel for a year now, I think the world would be a better place if there was a revival of apartment hotels. Preferably affordable ones.<<

I agree, that would help a lot.

We've enjoyed staying at long-stay business hotels, because they cater to businessmen during the week which means you can get a whole suite for a weekend cheaper than a single room at a regular hotel.

>> (The Wikipedia article really doesn't give a good sense of how mainstream a housing solution this was in the mid-twentieth century.) <<

That and boarding houses used to be the norm for single people. Then society got in a snit about it, and manufactured a massive housing crisis, then whined about all the homeless people on the streets and adult children still living with parents. 0_o

>>But would be nice if governments recognized this fact, and accepted a motel/hotel address as a permanent address.<<

I agree.

You should prompt for this, and it would be a perfect fit for Tuesday's fishbowl theme of "Brands, Products, and Services We Wish Existed." I've been thinking that in Terramagne, a small town with a housing problem could just hold a town meeting and decide to fix things standing in the way of necessary housing. Turn the old hotel into an apartment building. Reopen the boarding house. Delete all the zoning laws that prevent people from renting out a spare room, putting in a garage apartment, etc.