Redefining hospitality: the Kentucky hotel tackling America’s homeless crisis | Kentucky

In the past year, local and state governments across the United States have ramped up punitive policies to clear encampments and prevent people from sleeping on city streets.

That’s been the case in Kentucky as well, where lawmakers earlier this year made street camping illegal.

But in Louisville, the state’s largest city, a group of housing advocates are offering a different path forward. Two years ago, the group took over an aging hotel to provide unhoused people the space and stability they need to find permanent housing.

At the Arthur Street Hotel, about 80 guests at a time get a room, meals and access to a case management team that helps them through the process of getting a federal housing voucher, more commonly known as Section 8. Guests can also access therapists and substance abuse treatment, but neither are mandatory. Many continue to use drugs while living in the hotel.

Its model, focused on housing first and treatment later, is seeking purchase in a landscape increasingly hostile toward people without permanent housing.

Donald Trump has promised to remove unhoused people from US streets, and has toyed with the idea of using the death penalty against drug dealers. In overwhelmingly Democratic states such as California and Oregon, residents are increasingly abandoning progressive policies on drugs and homelessness in favor of policies including forced treatment and re-criminalizing drugs.

The country’s changing attitudes are compounding the challenges facing low-income and unhoused Americans: inadequate healthcare, unaffordable housing and drug addiction.

In Kentucky, there’s a shortage of about 200,000 homes and rental units, according to a Kentucky Housing Corp study. Meanwhile, housing prices are rising, homeownership rates are falling, and homelessness in the state’s largest cities increased nearly 20% between 2022 and 2023, according to the latest point in time counts.

Since Kentucky made street camping illegal, dozens of people have already been cited and arrested in Louisville.

The Arthur Street project has already helped more than 213 people transition from living on the streets, to a hotel room and finally, into permanent housing, the group says. Countless others have received food, water and connections to resources in the hotel’s lobby.

Like many service providers, the Arthur Street Hotel relies on the federal housing choice voucher program, also known as Section 8, to get people into rental apartments or houses. Each guest that comes into the hotel is assigned to a team of support specialists and housing case managers. They also provide transitional housing for people who are waiting to receive vouchers from other non-profits in Louisville.

Arthur Street’s housing first approach means many of the guests continue to use drugs while living at the hotel. They say the stability and safety that housing provides often allows people to work on other challenges they may have, such as mental illness, substance use disorder or both.

The financiers behind the hotel are one of the largest affordable housing developers in the country, headquartered in Louisville. Given its success, Arthur Street co-founder Donny Greene is eager to bring the model to other communities.

“It’s not whether we’re ready,” Greene said. “It’s that there is a need that is still unmet here, as well as a million other places in this country.”

Low barrier to entry

The housing first approach is working for 52-year-old Bonnie Baker.

Baker said she spent the last five years on the streets living with an abusive partner. At times, she would make holes in the fence in front of her tent that were only big enough for her to fit through, not her partner.

“When you’re outside you cannot power down, you have to because your body makes you eventually, but you have to be aware of your surroundings at all times,” Baker said.

Baker moved into the Arthur Street Hotel in February. She wasn’t considering sobriety when she first arrived and said she’d probably still be out on the street if hotel staff had tried to force her into treatment.

But when her housing voucher came through this summer and she started looking at apartments, Baker knew she was going to have to change her old patterns.

“I’ve seen a lot of people fail and lose their houses, like, right away. I want to keep this,” she said.

It was around that time that Baker asked about medication-assisted drug treatment. Now, every morning, she wakes up at the crack of dawn to go to treatment. Baker does a quick group therapy session before getting her medication. They talk about breathing techniques and gratitude lists.

“I kind of forgot about those,” Baker said, standing in a line with a dozen others waiting to walk up to the nurse stations. “I might suggest making a little group of people to make a gratitude list every morning, you know.”

Baker’s journey from chronic homelessness to stable housing – and her own decision to reduce her drug use – is the ideal outcome for advocates of the housing first model.

But the approach is not universally praised. It’s increasingly come under fire from conservatives who see it as enabling bad behaviors. And some of the critics wield a lot of power.

Opposing housing first

Devon Kurtz is the director of public safety at the Texas-based Cicero Institute. The thinktank’s model legislation was the inspiration for parts of the Safer Kentucky Act, which the state’s Republican-controlled general assembly approved earlier this year.

Among other things, the bill criminalized street camping and banned the use of state funding for housing programs that don’t require mental health and substance abuse treatment.

Kurtz said the “no rules” approach of housing first organizations can make things more dangerous for everyone.

“If we’re in the same housing unit and I’m using drugs and you’re a recovering addict, that is not a safe environment for you,” he said.

The Cicero Institute and other conservative lawmakers have also questioned whether providing housing to people who are still struggling with mental illness or substance use can actually lead to long-term stability.

That’s despite most available evidence showing that the vast majority of people who go through housing first programs are more likely to make it into permanent housing and still be in housing years later.

The approach doesn’t work for everyone, though.

Of the 426 people who’ve moved into the Arthur Street Hotel since it opened, 49 exited back to the streets. They either decided to leave or were kicked out for violating one of the few rules they have against repeated theft, threats of violence and actual violence. In San Francisco, one survey of people living on the streets in 2022 found 11% of respondents had already received some form of subsidized housing.

The Cicero Institute advocates for states to fund a mix of programs, including those with stricter rules and requirements. And they’ve had some success influencing policy, not just in Kentucky but in Florida and Texas, too.

Greene, Arthur Street’s co-founder, argues that everyone, regardless of whether they use drugs, has a right to housing. He thinks Arthur Street isn’t much different from other motels or bars, where everyone knows people are using drugs.

“The only difference is that we actually acknowledge that we know it happens,” he said.

A lack of resources, and a way forward

This is a “defining moment” for the US when it comes to addressing the twin crises of homelessness and addiction, said Marcy Thompson, vice-president of policy and programs at the National Alliance to End Homelessness.

Thompson said service providers’ embrace of housing first and harm reduction approaches are incorrectly blamed. In reality, it’s an issue of resources, she said.

“Even if every person in your community wanted to go into treatment tomorrow, there aren’t enough beds,” she said. “There aren’t enough mental health providers. There isn’t enough of anything.”

The increasing popularity of punitive approaches come from the mistaken belief that they are indications of a person’s moral failings, rather than a failure of governments to provide people with the resources they need to live healthy and productive lives, she said.

Arthur Street is trying to provide those resources. Given the chance, its founders say they would love to replicate what they’re doing in other places. But the project’s funders don’t think it would be easy.

Lisa Dischinger and her husband, Chris, are co-founders of LDG Development, one of the largest affordable housing developers in the country, headquartered in Louisville. They were the people who came to Greene two years ago, offering to purchase the Clarion Hotel that would eventually become Arthur Street.

Today, the non-profit Rita June Foundation, which Lisa Dischinger chairs, foots almost the entire bill for the day-to-day operations of Arthur Street. It’s a yearly tab of about $3m.

“I kind of laugh, when they come and they go, OK, can we open 10 more of these?” Dischinger said. “I’m like, we can’t even, as a community, fund this one.”

Like Greene, Dischinger said she sees the need for more Arthur Streets locally and across the country, but that requires long-term financial sustainability which remains out of reach two years on.

It costs Arthur Street about $150 per guest, per night. That includes all of the wraparound services, such as case management, transportation to doctor’s appointments, and laundry. Arthur Street leans on different community partners for other services, such as a walk-in clinic that recently opened up in a spare room there.

Arthur Street’s leadership has started to put a big focus on sharing their story and seeing what grants and other funding streams are available.

But outside funding can have its own pitfalls. Sometimes, non-profits have to tweak their mission or their work to fit with what they can get a grant for. Part of the hotel’s success has also been its partnerships with other housing agencies and non-profits. If Arthur Street starts competing with them for limited pots of money, such as Medicaid dollars, that could strain relationships.

The reality, however, is that a single funder can’t foot the entire bill forever.

“We’re putting a lot of resources in, but we can’t do it alone,” Dischinger said. “No one can do it alone. It’s just, it’s not possible.”

Another challenge that could make community relations more difficult for another Arthur Street – and perhaps the model’s biggest challenge – is the legal gray area it operates within.

Arthur Street’s housing first approach, allowing guests to continue using drugs in a safer environment, probably isn’t legal anywhere in the US, even if it’s an effective housing strategy.

Dischinger said city officials in Louisville aren’t blind to what goes on at Arthur Street. She and other hotel leaders say they think the reason law enforcement isn’t busting the doors down is because the program works. Plus, the city doesn’t really have an alternative for helping the population Arthur Street serves.

“The fact that we’ve put so many people into housing, and taken them off of the street, it’s kind of hard to argue with it,” Dischinger said. “You know, people are going to do it, it’s just a matter of where and a matter of getting them the support they need so they can keep getting better.”

While Arthur Street has so far been able to operate without law enforcement interference, it’s not clear how another city would respond to this program.

A hopeful transition

In October, Baker moved into a one-bedroom house with a big porch and a backyard where her dog Wren can play.

“Isn’t it beautiful?” Baker said to one of the hotel’s support staff on a recent visit.

When she first got a room at Arthur Street, Baker struggled with the transition. She’d spend some nights at the hotel, others back in her tent. She hasn’t been nearly as apprehensive about her new place.

As she got ready to move into her new home, she wrote an email to Dustin, her case manager.

“I said: ‘Hi Dustin, it’s Bonnie Baker. I hope you’re having a good day,’” she said.

Reciting the email she sent him, Baker told Dustin not to listen to the people who were saying she wasn’t ready to leave Arthur Street. She said they’re just haters.

“LOL, I’m telling you I have a real chance of being happier than I’ve ever been at this lovely house and I love the location,” she said.

Tears streaming down her face, Baker said she also told Dustin how much she appreciated his work.

“I just wanted to thank you, Dustin, for all the effort that you put in and I’m so grateful to you. You told me to stay the course with the house and I decided to trust you,” she said.

Baker said she eventually wants to go back to Arthur Street, but only for a little bit at a time. She wants to volunteer, helping other people with their transition and giving back to a place that she says saved her life.

This story was reported and produced by Louisville Public Media. Read the entire series here.