What Is It Like Being Homeless in America? - Pulitzer Prize Winning Author Brian [6:40-11:48]

Across the country, extended stay hotels and motels had become critical nodes in the ecosystem of American homelessness. These places essentially function I came to realize as for-profit, commercial homeless shelters. Charging outrageous weekly rates for substandard often hazard as conditions while offering none of the tenant rights or protections that come with formal housing. Their proliferation is no accident. In fact, I was astonished to discover that today Wall Street investors and private equity firms are not only buying up vast swaths of the nation's rental properties, like the ones Celeste had been living in, but they're also cornering the market on the very places where people go once they lose their housing. Blackstone and starwood capital and other private equity giants have moved aggressively into the extended stay market, betting billions that amid a national housing crisis, this model will only grow. The logic is brutally clear. As more and more people are deprived of housing, extended stays have rushed into exploit the gap, capitalizing on the precarity of those with nowhere else to turn. Many of us are familiar with the famous line about how extremely expensive it is to be poor in this country. In many ways, what my book documents is the flip side of that. How extremely lucrative, how extremely profitable all of this insecurity has become. And in many ways, I argue that homelessness has indeed become big business. This was certainly true of efficiency lodge where Celeste and her kids found themselves because it was the cheapest hotel around, even though their cramped studio-sized room was more than double what she had been paying for her old three-bedroom rental home. Celeste had no intention of staying at efficiency lodge longer than a month or two. Her plan was to save what she could and pay off her eviction debt. But this plan was derailed by yet another wrenching turn. She started experiencing an array of vague but persistent physical symptoms, and soon she was diagnosed with ovarian and breast cancer. She started chemo, which left her nauseated and bone tired. Her body was screaming at her to stay put to rest, but like many jobs in our new labor economy, her employer at the warehouse offered no sick leave, and she knew she couldn't afford to miss even a single paycheck. The hotel began to feel like an expensive prison. Complaints about a broken air conditioner or a leaking ceiling or rodents or rampant mold were always met with a version of, well, there are plenty of others who will gladly take your place. I can't tell you how many times I heard that refrain while sitting next to the manager at the hotel. Available rooms at efficiency, like at the other hotels in its vicinity, were exceedingly scarce, and management wielded this fact like a weapon. If one family left, there were always three or four others willing to rent their room. Many residents used the phrase hotel trap to describe their predicament. With no other options, they were caught in a semi-permanent state of limbo. Every morning, school buses arrived at efficiency in the many other hotels lining Candler Road to pick up children who had lived there not for months but for years. There were people who had been there so long that the hotel address was on their driver's license. Nobody wanted to be their long term, but they knew the alternative if they failed to pay their weekly rent and got locked out of their room was even worse. In this respect, the only thing scarier than being stuck at a place like efficiency was not being able to remain there. Celeste often thought about the hotel motto she had seen behind the manager's desk when she first checked in. The sign read, stay a night or stay forever. Now this motto seemed less like an invitation than a threat. Desperate for help Celeste finally woke up at 431 morning and drove to Gateway Center, the primary hub for homeless services in Atlanta. She arrived to find a long line already sneaking down the sidewalk. After hours of waiting, she finally entered the building, clutching a folder with hotel receipts, pay stubs, birth certificates. In a windowless room, a caseworker began a standardized assessment. Had Celeste ever been diagnosed with a behavioral disorder? HIV AIDS? When was the last time she was arrested? Use drugs? Try to harm herself? Never? No? No? Never? Celeste responded? She tried to explain the cancer, the eviction,