Travel restrictions and lockdown made it suffocating to survive for many hotels and motels. Many family-run budget inns shut during the first quarter of the lockdown. The loss borne by the hotels are huge, and there was no chance of revival. That was the situation when intelligent investors like Maxwell Drever suggested many options for resuming business.
The local authorities and municipalities started working closely with the letting agents to find the potential tenants. The list was of families seeking homes near the workplaces or where new jobs are more opportunities. More hotels in the small-town areas and suburban sections of communities were going empty. The local bodies worked closely with the realtors to understand the gap between the supply of hotel rooms and the demand for houses. The local municipality bridged this gap between the hotels/motels with the homeless families.
Maxwell Drever tells about hotels and motels as emergency shelters
The first quarter of the year 2020 augmented the demand for housing solutions for many homeless families. The pandemic crippled the hospitality sector, and many budget hotels went empty for months. Since the homeless are at higher risk of contracting any infectious disease – covid became a significant threat. It is one of the primary reasons that most small-budget hotels opted for conversion to affordable accommodation options for the homeless.
The significant advantage of mass conversion of motels into shelter homes are:
- You can immediately offer homes to families in need.
- You do not have to consider building new apartments, and there is zero additional cost.
- Accommodating more families under the roof is the best option than providing houses at different locations.
- More buildings like unoccupied offices and distressed hotels also joined in for similar solutions.
- Medical care and mass vaccination programs became possible on accommodating more families in cheap hotels during a pandemic.
- The funds for quick revamping budget hotels into shelter homes are also possible through the Federal emergency management agency and the covid relief funds.
- More than 65% of hotels needing desperate occupancy for survival got the transformation of multifamily housing units.
- You can offer more rooms, kitchen facilities, toilets, water, and electricity with proper ventilation at affordable rates to desperate families.
The conversion was temporary until the pandemic, but soon the requirement changed with the vaccine and disease control. More families prefer continuing in the converted hotel homes. The need calls for specific changes and the transformation of rooms into a proper house. Similarly, many budget hotels also opted to continue offering residential services to homeless people. So many went for permanent conversion of room to homes. The government supported this decision and provided funds from the CoronaVirus relief fund.
Maxwell Drever reveals that the average cost of converting one room into a permanent house is around $25000. And the average cost of acquiring the converted houses is approximately $50000. It is an ideal situation to pull the hospitality sector from the grip of non-profit business. More families are happy getting home and coming off from streets. The mass conversion is perfect for small towns and families living on the outskirts of the central city.