The Ritz – Carlton is known for luxury. With room starting at a one million dollar minimum guests may soon be living next to the homeless.

As Part of Project Roomkey, the Ritz-Carlton has its sights set on helping the homeless.

Ritz And Project Roomkey

The Carlton is planning on being part of a city wide effort to help the homeless during this time. Project Roomkey asks many hotels and property owners to fill vacant rooms to help the homeless fight against COVID-19.

As of right now, more than 3,000 rooms have been utilized to help shelter the homeless. Imagine spending the high luxury cost of one of their rooms only to find out your neighbor is a homeless person. Well, that could be the case soon.

Los Angeles Homeless

LA is “home” to one of the highest homeless populations in the country. The level of displacement prior to pandemic was high, but now that unemployment has hit many, some are finding themselves on the street.

The project plans to utilize over 15,000 unused hotel, motel, and other property rooms to shelter those in need.

Public Concerns

For many counties, they have been reluctant to have the homeless under their care and without any sort of income. The issue is that workers would be needed to help maintain the properties. This comes at a cost. In order for workers to be “working” they need to be paid. If the building isn’t receiving any income, then there is no incentive for people to work on the building.

Another issue to note is that cost of people spending lavish amounts of money to be next to homeless. The obvious factor of spending money to live in luxury doesn’t bode well when your neighbor can get the same luxuries for nothing.

The Ritz will make a decision shortly as to its inclusion into the program.