{"id":390,"date":"2022-11-28T11:17:27","date_gmt":"2022-11-28T19:17:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/investigations\/?p=673"},"modified":"2023-04-25T15:00:24","modified_gmt":"2023-04-25T22:00:24","slug":"motels-that-house-homeless-are-riddled-with-crime-infested-with-vermin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/investigations\/homelessness\/motels-that-house-homeless-are-riddled-with-crime-infested-with-vermin","title":{"rendered":"Motels that house homeless are riddled with crime, infested with vermin"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>John Dew corrals his pug, Sonny, away from the bathroom, where a patch of black mold has sprouted on the ceiling. The 1-year-old puppy has been sickened twice during the seven months he has lived at the Coast Motel, just west of the Traffic Circle on Pacific Coast Highway.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDon\u2019t touch anything,\u201d he says to a visitor in a slow, graveled voice. \u201cI\u2019m afraid to have people here. I don\u2019t want anyone getting sick.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Dew, 62, became homeless earlier this year for the first time in his life. A litany of health issues sapped his savings from a career as a building contractor: He says he has had seven back surgeries, a genetic blood-clotting disorder that causes seizures and a noncancerous brain tumor.<\/p>\n<p>He was placed in the Coast Motel by the city as part of its efforts to confront Long Beach\u2019s rising homelessness crisis. The Coast is one of three motels with which the city has contracted and are owned by the same family. At least two of the motels, the Coast and Colonial Motel, also on Pacific Coast Highway, are infested with vermin.<\/p>\n<p>Some of the 32 residents who have stayed at the Coast longer than a month say they have reported a lengthy list of problems to the property manager and, in some cases, to the city, including violence on the premises, unsanitary bedding, mold on the mattresses, blocked fire exits and no handicapped access.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe towels look like something you would use to work on a car,\u201d says Dew, who cleans himself with a washcloth because his disabilities prevent him from accessing the moldy shower.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"LOCKED OUT: John Dew\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/peaG1j41T9o?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Homeless advocates have raised questions about whether the city is doing enough to monitor conditions at motels where large sums in public funding have been spent to get people off the street and into safe, habitable housing with services that put them on a path toward a more stable future.<\/p>\n<p>The city has placed roughly 175 people in the motels since January as part of an expanded motel voucher program, paying the motels\u2019 owner $1.8 million, which has come mostly from federal COVID relief funds. The rent for one cramped room with a queen bed is about $3,000 a month. The hotel isn\u2019t required to provide any other services, according to city contracts.<\/p>\n<p>The owner of the motels, Yogesh Patel, says he fixes problems when they\u2019re brought to his attention but blames residents for most of them.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThey bring bugs with them,\u201d Patel said in a brief phone interview before hanging up. \u201cThey steal my stuff, they break my windows.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Patel says he is housing these individuals because he wants to help with the city\u2019s homelessness problem. Despite resident complaints at his motels, the City Council in May awarded him a $2.9 million contract to provide rooms to homeless individuals through at least May 2023.<\/p>\n<p>Close to half of the funding paid to Patel has come from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, with the rest provided through state and federal grant subsidies to support transitional housing, officials say. The city uses only a small slice of its own funds to address homelessness. Of the $93 million it has spent or received since 2021 to help the unhoused, less than 2%, or $1.8 million, came from the city\u2019s general fund.<\/p>\n<p>The City Council\u2019s vote to contract with Patel was unanimous, with no discussion, even though one of his properties, the Colonial, was listed as one of the six worst motels in the city as part of a 2018 pilot program to rid the city of so-called \u201cnuisance motels.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The Colonial was included in the program because data showed police responded to the facility 569 times in a three-year span, an average of about once every 48 hours. Authorities reported 130 crimes there between 2014 and 2017.<\/p>\n<p>At the time, Patel <a href=\"https:\/\/old.lbpost.com\/news\/ordinance-targeting-nuisance-motels-in-long-beach-to-be-explored-by-city\">questioned those figures<\/a>, saying he employed private security at his hotels and was providing a public service.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI don\u2019t know if you want to stop renting rooms to people who don\u2019t have a place to go,\u201d Patel said in 2018. \u201cDo you want them to live in huts, camped out on Pacific Coast Highway like we have in Downtown Long Beach on the riverbed?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Kelly Colopy, the director of the city\u2019s Health Department, says the hotel has improved since being targeted for the pilot program. But recent data shows the situation there has actually grown worse. From Jan. 1 to Oct. 1 of this year, police responded to the Colonial 179 times, an average of once every 36 hours, Long Beach police call records show.<\/p>\n<p>At the Coast, police responded to 75 calls, an average of once every 84 hours.<\/p>\n<p>City records also show that the Colonial and Coast were each cited for building code violations in October 2021. Patel fixed the problems, which included holes and damage to the exterior stucco and roof damage at the Colonial and holes in the walls around electrical outlets in two rooms at the Coast.<\/p>\n<p>Patel downplayed concerns about the security and condition of the facilities, saying no one else is stepping up to help. City officials say Patel, in fact, was awarded the contract because he was the sole bidder when the city released a \u201crequest for proposals\u201d in October 2021.<\/p>\n<p>Colopy says Patel is willing to take people in, including their pets, sometimes in the middle of the night. \u201cWe\u2019ve done a lot of outreach to other motels,\u201d Colopy says, but it hasn\u2019t produced significant results.<b>&nbsp;<\/b><\/p>\n<p>Paul Duncan, head of the city\u2019s Homeless Bureau, says that when he receives complaints, he notifies Patel to get them corrected. Duncan could not provide the exact number of complaints he\u2019s personally received, but said there have not been many.<\/p>\n<p>City staff do not regularly visit or inspect the motel properties where they have placed homeless people with publicly-funded vouchers. Outside of building code violations documented by city inspectors, there are no centralized records kept of complaints or proof that motel owners corrected them, officials said.<\/p>\n<p>Residents told the Post that they have lodged complaints with on-site property managers at the motels and with the Multi-service Center, which is the central place for referrals to temporary housing, such as motels.<\/p>\n<p>Complaints may have been documented by case managers, but those files are confidential and would have to be requested with redactions, according to Health Department spokesperson Jennifer Rice Epstein.<b>&nbsp;<\/b><\/p>\n<p>No one from the city, or any third party, is on site to handle resident problems, unlike a program called Project Roomkey, in which the city rented out the Days Inn Hotel and hired a nonprofit to staff the facility and provide some services. That program <a href=\"https:\/\/old.lbpost.com\/news\/high-anxiety-homeless-project-roomkey-ending-days-inn\">ended Sept. 30<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Initially, Dew says, he was told he would be at the Coast for no more than 30 days and figured he could live with the problems for that time. But he says he was upset when he received no help or services, even after he says he called the city\u2019s social services hub a half dozen times.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_10000079441\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-10000079441\" style=\"width: 1110px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"https:\/\/old.lbpost.com\/1122-hotel-8\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-10000079441\" src=\"https:\/\/img.lbpost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/22132637\/1122-Hotel-8-1110x526.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1110\" height=\"526\"><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-10000079441\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">A vehicle zooms past the Coast Motel on Pacific Coast Highway in Long Beach on Nov. 22, 2022. Photo by Thomas R. Cordova.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Recently, he and others were told they had two weeks to find a new place to stay, with their part of the program ending this month because pandemic funds used for their vouchers are drying up.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat was the point of putting me here?\u201d says 61-year-old Scott Humphrey, who has lived at the Colonial since late March and was among those told they\u2019d need to leave this month. \u201cI thought I could pull myself out of this, but I can\u2019t do this alone. I need help.\u201d<\/p>\n<h5><b>\u2018Nobody did a thing\u2019&nbsp;<\/b><\/h5>\n<p>Humphrey had been homeless for six years, most recently living in the riverbed at Second Street and Studebaker Road, when he finally decided he\u2019d had enough.<\/p>\n<p>The channel flooded during rains last spring, sending trash and muck into his campsite. Some of his possessions were stolen. He began to worry about the health of his dog, Lulu.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_10000079627\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-10000079627\" style=\"width: 1110px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"https:\/\/old.lbpost.com\/scott-humphrey61\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-10000079627\" src=\"https:\/\/img.lbpost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/28103414\/scott-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1110\" height=\"740\"><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-10000079627\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Scott Humphrey, 61, had been living at the Colonial Motel in Long Beach since May 2022, after being homeless for six years. Photo by Cheantay Jensen.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>When a sheriff\u2019s deputy visited with a social worker, he agreed to accept their offer of help. They took him to the city\u2019s Multi-service Center, where he spent a day tracking down Social Security paperwork and birth records. He was then placed at Patel\u2019s Colonial motel.<\/p>\n<p>One night, he says he awoke to bees swarming in his room. They were coming out of the light fixture in the bathroom. He says he complained to the property manager and a nest was removed in the unit above him.<\/p>\n<p>Unlike Dew, Humphrey has an emergency housing voucher that is supposed to come with intensive case management. A few weeks ago, he says, a woman knocked on his door, introduced herself as his case manager and said he had two weeks to find a new place.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI need help and I didn\u2019t get it,\u201d says Humphrey, who has been diagnosed with depression and a range of other health issues.<\/p>\n<p>The 32 residents at the Colonial and Coast who have used long-term motel vouchers\u2013meaning for more than a month\u2013are all being offered alternative housing as the program ends, says the Homeless Bureau\u2019s Duncan. As of mid-November, however, about 15 of them were still trying to find a place.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe are working with everyone to create a plan for exit with each person and sometimes the options that are available may not be exactly what the person is looking for but we work to find multiple options so that everyone has a place to go and that people aren\u2019t just being kicked out,\u201d Duncan said in an email.<\/p>\n<p>Dew says he was offered a top bunk at the city\u2019s congregate shelter, Atlantic Farms Bridge Housing Community, known as ABC.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI don&#8217;t know how I\u2019d get myself up there,\u201d he says, referring to his significant physical limitations.<\/p>\n<p>Earlier this month Dew moved into a sober living home, thanks to help from a friend from his church, Grace Community in Seal Beach, and local housing advocate Christine Barry. But he left and is now living in his car, in part because he wasn\u2019t allowed to take his dog, Sonny.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI go to church and I pray that a door will open,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s all I can do.\u201d<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_10000079628\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-10000079628\" style=\"width: 1110px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"https:\/\/old.lbpost.com\/john-dew-62\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-10000079628\" src=\"https:\/\/img.lbpost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/28103418\/John_Dew-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1110\" height=\"788\"><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-10000079628\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">John Dew, 62, had been living at the Coast Motel for six months before leaving in early November 2022. He is now living in his car. Photo by Cheantay Jensen.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<h5><b>Making the jump to permanent housing&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/b><\/h5>\n<p>Housing people with motel vouchers is nothing new. The city has, in fact, paid Patel for thousands of room nights over the past decade. The city\u2019s quality of life officers and multidisciplinary outreach teams carry vouchers with them as they encounter people on the street. If individuals want help, they are given a place to stay.<\/p>\n<p>But motel vouchers were intended to be short-term stays of a few days, enough time for a case manager to meet with the person and figure out next steps. And those have been limited.<\/p>\n<p>Through its various programs, including motel vouchers, Roomkey and another similar program called Project Homekey, only 63 people of 324 found permanent housing, according to the most recent figures provided to the Post.<\/p>\n<p>City officials say there are many reasons that finding permanent housing for people has been difficult. One of those, they say, is the shortage of landlords willing to rent to people with housing vouchers. Also, they say, it takes time and often multiple \u201ccontacts\u201d to get many unhoused people to accept services.<\/p>\n<p>About 200 people walk into the Multi-service Center each day and case managers are overloaded, says Deputy City Manager Teresa Chandler.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThose experiencing homelessness are trying to overcome barriers,\u201d she says. \u201cBut it\u2019s a very complicated process.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>City officials say they are working to provide more permanent housing solutions. This month, Long Beach took ownership of the Luxury Inn in North Long Beach, also a hotel deemed a nuisance in 2018, at a cost of $16.6 million.<\/p>\n<p>When that facility opens for temporary housing in roughly a year, the city will convert another hotel it already owns, the Best Western\u2014now part of a transitional housing effort\u2014into permanent housing, officials said.<\/p>\n<p>And, even as long-term stays are ending at the Coast and Colonial, the city is now housing 40 people at a different hotel, the Hyland Inn on Long Beach Boulevard, as part of a six-month grant to get people out of encampments.<\/p>\n<p>But critics say the city simply shuffles people between temporary housing solutions\u2014and in the case of Patel\u2019s motels, expensive ones that aren\u2019t safe or sanitary.<\/p>\n<p>The city should do a better job of negotiating rates and providing people with assistance to find permanent housing, says Barry, the homeless advocate.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s just dangling this carrot that never leads anywhere,\u201d she says of temporary housing. \u201cWe set them up to fail, and then we blame them instead of the bureaucracy.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The city in May awarded a nearly $3 million contract to the owner of a motel that was named one of six nuisance motels due to high crime. Recent data shows the situation hasn\u2019t improved. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":206,"featured_media":525,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"single-feature.php","format":"standard","meta":{"newspack_sponsor_sponsorship_scope":"","newspack_sponsor_native_byline_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_native_category_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_style":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_placement":"inherit","inline_featured_image":false,"_":"","_author_alias":"","cap-aim":"","cap-description":"","cap-display_name":"","cap-first_name":"","cap-jabber":"","cap-last_name":"","cap-linked_account":"","cap-newspack_employer":"","cap-newspack_job_title":"","cap-newspack_phone_number":"","cap-newspack_role":"","cap-user_email":"","cap-user_login":"","cap-website":"","cap-yahooim":"","newspack_article_summary":"","newspack_email_html":"","newspack_email_type":"","newspack_featured_image_position":"behind","newspack_hide_page_title":"","newspack_hide_updated_date":false,"newspack_popups_has_disabled_popups":"","newspack_post_subtitle":"","newspack_show_share_buttons":"","newspack_sponsor_byline_prefix":"","newspack_sponsor_disclaimer_override":"","newspack_sponsor_flag_override":"","newspack_sponsor_only_direct":"","newspack_sponsor_url":"","newspack_article_summary_title":"Overview:","newspack_show_updated_date":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[24,35,74],"newspack_spnsrs_tax":[],"coauthors":[13],"class_list":["post-390","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-homelessness","tag-homelessness","tag-locked-out","tag-motel-vouchers","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/investigations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/390","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/investigations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/investigations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/investigations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/206"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/investigations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=390"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/investigations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/390\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":635,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/investigations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/390\/revisions\/635"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/investigations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/525"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/investigations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=390"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/investigations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=390"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/investigations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=390"},{"taxonomy":"newspack_spnsrs_tax","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/investigations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newspack_spnsrs_tax?post=390"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/investigations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=390"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}