City Proposes Sexy and Innovative New Way to House Homeless and Low-Income Macrappers

hometel
DHLS rendering of luxury hometel. This unit features a plush sofa/toilet/pull-out-bed combo, state-of-the-art appliances, a shower/kitchen-sink, a bookshelf window with view of Panhattan, and a deluxe 8-foot-wide television situated on the opposite wall.

Homelessness got a whole lot sexier in Macrapolis Monday after Mayor Will H. Rush announced plans to build luxury homeless shelters throughout the city.

Rush presented the “hometels” proposal during a news conference at Shitty Hall. He spoke alongside officials from the city’s Department of Homeless Land Security.

The trillionaire mayor said that the luxury shelters will provide low-income Macrappers with quality living options at no cost. And, amid rapidly rising real estate prices, the plan sounds intriguing at the very least.

“Gone are the days where homeless people have to live in shame and mire in sub-standard conditions,” Rush said during Monday’s news conference. “This city has the power to reimagine and redefine what it means to be homeless in America. The 21st Century will be remembered as the age when homelessness transformed from gross to enviable.”

The DHLS has targeted the East Macrapolis section of Clarkelyn and the Africa section of Kings as the first two sites of construction for the hometels. Hometel residents will be able to stay at a given location for up to 90 days before they have to relocate to a new site.

“We must remember that many of these families haven’t been fortunate enough to afford to go on a vacation,” Rush said. “Now they can essentially live out a perpetual vacation in the world’s dopest city.”

The city plans to partner with Soaring Amazing, Academic Achievement, We Love Kids So Much, Children First Academy, a charter school with more than 40 locations throughout the four boroughs.

Rush said that families enrolled in the program will be able to send their children to any Amazing Achievement Academy location in Macrapolis. The students will also have 24-hour access to their Amazing Achievement Academy teachers thanks to the removal of burdensome union regulations.

Darrel Gates, commissioner of the DHLS, says that construction plans for the hometels are inspired by the concept of micro-apartments — which are being touted as an innovative way to unnecessarily pack large amounts of people into already overcrowded cities.

“Think micro-apartments. But even more compact and efficiently spaced. Designers have already come up with amazing ways to fit families of four to five people in spaces that could’ve only legally fit one occupant in the past,” Gates said during the news conference. “We can conserve space and resources and still give families a modern and chic environment to interact with.”

The individual hometel units will have state-of-the-art amenities. And, the hometel complexes will come equipped with playgrounds, pools, communal resource centers and sustainable rooftop gardens, according to the proposal.

Interestingly, even people who already have permanent residency in Macrapolis would be eligible to enter into the hometel system. Macrappers who decide to sell their homes, leave Section 8 or drop out of the city’s public housing program will be given priority preference in the new shelter system and would receive monetary compensation for entering.

“We have thousands of Macrappers living in inherited homes who are struggling to make ends meet. With Brownstones going for millions of dollars, people can go from poor to wealthy overnight,” Rush said.

“Those living in publicly subsidized homes no longer have to live under sub-par conditions and in violent environments. They can move their families into what will be some of the most luxurious facilities the city has to offer. Each unit will be a poor man’s penthouse.”

Critics say the plan is simply another scheme by the mayor to expedite the removal of the city’s most “undesirable” residents.

“Low-income Macrappers are being priced out of the city’s real estate market. And, he’s trying to make that look sexy,” Sonia Hamer, executive director of the nonprofit advocacy group Don’t Fall For it Again, tells The Bluffington Roach.

She believes that the DHLS is incentivizing low-income Macrappers to evacuate prime real estate — in a plot to accelerate the gentrification of various neighborhoods throughout the city.

“He wants them out of the brownstones. And, he wants them out of the projects, so that developers can turn those into condos,” Hamer says. “If he really wanted to help, he’d revamp the city’s affordable housing program. It’s costing the city upwards of $3,000 each month to house families in shelters. Why not put that money towards permanent housing?”

When Rush was first elected mayor in 1997, the average number of Macrappers sleeping in homeless shelters each night was just above 20,000 people a night. Two years ago, that number topped 50,000 for the first time since the Great Depression Era.

And, those figures continue to rise.

More than half of the city’s shelter population is black, and over 30 percent of shelter residents are Latino. Hamer implores Macrappers not to succumb to the lure of the new project. She argues that the short-term perks of the program will sour in the long run.

“We’ve seen this before. They packed us into those Skinner boxes, which they called housing projects, in cities across the country decades ago. Then they abandoned us. Now they want us gone,” Hamer says. “Look at Pruitt-Igoe. The same thing will happen with the hometels program if we allow it.”

The mayor’s office released a statement regarding the accusations levied against the project by critics. Rush reassured Macrappers that the project would be great for Macrapolis and promised to keep the hometel facilitates in pristine shape.

“The reality is that every thriving city wants to attract hardworking, successful, and wealthy people. They are what make a city great,” Rush said Monday. “But, we mustn’t forget about the lesser among us. And, the Hometel Project is an extraordinary way to ensure that we don’t.”

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