When Mayor Mike Johnston took office with big declarations about how homeless shelters should work, he pledged to ensure hundreds of guests at the city’s new hotel-style shelters had doors, locks and keys for their private rooms — a significant upgrade from traditional shelters with army cots in noisy, open warehouses.
“We believed it was possible that we could bring people off the streets and into housing and shelter that offered dignity and civility,” Johnston said in 2023. That included “a locked door, a bed, access to showers and kitchens and bathrooms, your own heat, your own air conditioning.”
But a new nonprofit running one of Johnston’s non-congregate shelters is reversing that decision. Residents of The Aspen, a shelter in a former DoubleTree hotel, are no longer able to access their own rooms with a key card. Instead, they must ask shelter staff to let them into their rooms anytime they return home…