With the federal eviction moratorium over, many call Las Vegas' Desert Moon Motel home

[Demovictory9]

With the federal eviction moratorium over, many call Las Vegas’ Desert Moon Motel home


LAS VEGAS — Jake Crandall took a deep pull from his vape as a woman emerged from the darkness of Fremont Street and into the parking lot of the Desert Moon Motel. She gripped the final $20 she owed him.
“Here you go,” she said. He didn’t ask how she got it.

“Thanks,” Crandall, the property manager, replied. “We will figure it out again tomorrow.”

It was just after 9 p.m., and since she had now paid the full daily rate — $57 — Room 5 would again be hers for the night, a welcome reprieve from the woman’s other option: the back seat of her red Pontiac sedan. Crandall knew the woman, who asked that her name not be used because of the sensitivity of her situation, didn’t have anywhere else to stay.

For much of the last week, she and her two teenagers, both autistic, alternated between sleeping at the motel or inside the car. The 45-year-old woman said she lost her one-bedroom Los Angeles apartment early in the COVID-19 pandemic. Ever since, she’s been traveling back and forth between Los Angeles and Las Vegas, staying with family when she can.

Crandall, a 19-year-old self-described beatnik in his gap year who recently moved from Santa Cruz, runs the day-to-day operations at the Desert Moon for his uncle, who owns the aging, 30-room motel.

https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2021-10-21/las-vegas-motel-provides-eviction-relief-amid-covid-economy

[Johnny2X2X]

1. Good article

We're all closer to homelessness than we think. People think it can't happen to them, that they've made all the right decisions. In this country, we're all getting sick in the wrong way from losing it all. Renters can lose everything quickly. But home owners can lose it all too. Everyone out on the streets has a story, talk to them some time, a lot of them probably have backgrounds similar to your own.

The reason for this is wages simply haven't risen with the economy for 40 years. Our parents and grandparents wages were enough for them to have savings while owning a home and not working themselves to death. Our parents and grand parents didn't face ruinous health care costs like we do.

[hunter]

2. Solving the homeless problem has an easy answer.

Build more homes. They don't have to be fancy.

We know why the giant sterile housing blocks of 1950s and 1960s U.S.A., Britain, and the Soviet Union didn't work. Now we do.

People need a sense of security, ownership, and community if a place is to thrive.

This motel seems to be working well enough, probably because there is some sense of community. They've got someone who can maintain the place, fixing leaky faucets broken air conditioners and such, living on site, and a manager tolerant of people who are experiencing some tough times.