Hotel Ethical Dilemmas

The shelter's that social services send the families too are not only priced ridiculously however are incredibly horrifying to picture families staying in. The Emergency Assessment Unit, otherwise known as the EAU, are supposed to place people in shelters that will provide a safe place for those in need. This is not the case, and although the original thought is ethical the circumstances that these innocent families are placed are unethical. In the text, the Martinique Hotel charges each person in poverty to stay a nightly fee, usually around $63 a night. This rounds to about $1900 a month. If they want visitors they must pay $12.40 for husbands and $16.70 for grandparents or extended family to stay the evening (59). Families are placed here and are expected

to pay rent with their welfare checks that they must wait on hours and hours of long lines. The people that stay in these buildings with the 400 other children in the hotel are crack dealers, drug abusers, and prostitutes. The shape these hotels are in are not pretty ones. A person would not be proud to say this is my apartment in the city, in fact it is embarrassing to live in such a life hazard with young children. The way these shelters are kept are not safe for kid and families to stay in. Meanwhile they force and push people to go out and find another place to stay daily, leaving them no time to look for a job. It would make more sense for a person to find a job, stay in the dangerous apartment while they work and save money, then when they finally do have money saved up they could afford something more in their price range. The way social services does this is backwards. It is torture to go out and let families look at the beautiful homes they can't afford, and when they ask for some extra money to afford them they get denied. The rooms these family stay in are extremely harmful not only to full grown adults, but babies as well. "The plumbing has overflowed and left a pool of sewage on the floor. A radiator valve is broken. It releases a spray scalding steam at the eye level of a child. The crib provided by the hotel appears to be unstable...The beds in the room are dangerous too. They are made of metal frames with unprotected corners; the mattresses do not fit the frames. At one corner or another, metal is exposed." How do social services expect people to live like that? Especially with young toddlers! To worry every night if the child's crib will suddenly collapse while the child is sleeping in nerve racking. Or if a younger child gets excited while playing with their sibling and bumps their head on the metal frame. A mother is now in even more distress because they don't have the money to bring the child to the doctor, or doesn't know how to treat the child when they receive the medication?

Some diseases a person can get when exposed to raw sewage are Campylobacteriosis, Giardia, Solmonella, Cryptosporidium and Hepatitis A. Would anyone want their children or even themselves to be around that many diseases? That's not even all of the diseases that are included. How is it fair for people to live like this? Of course, social services hide their tracks somehow, by having the Family Hotel Inspection program, however the hotels are notified before inspection so they can warn tenants and fix things that will make them fail inspection. When speaking about getting more shelters on Staten Island, the Borough President opposed it. "'A jail is preferable to a shelter' he explains, 'because it's self contained.' He notes that 'it doesn't spill over' into the surrounding of the neighborhoods" (106). This thought is completely ignorant. A borough president would prefer children to be living in a 4 mile radius of drug dealers, rapists, child molesters, etc. Then live in a 4 mile radius of people who just need a place to sleep at

night. Who crave education and ability to be independent but cannot break the circle of poverty. How is this logical? To speak of human beings who just need help like they are radioactive waste. To speak as though they are poisonous to the community. This is not even close to how they treat those who normally society protects first.