A couple years ago, my office booked me into a hotel due to various meetings around a conference. I showed up at the hotel, checked in and went up to my room. As I was in a city centre, I didn't think anything about the drunk, smelly men making passes at me when I walked into the hotel. I was a bit surprised to find the drunk, smelly men making a pass at me in the elevator up to my floor and then further drunk, smelly men making a pass at me in the corridor I had to walk down to get to my room.
When I made it safely into my room, I phoned down to reception. 'WTH is going on??' was the gist of my enquiry and I was told that the hotel had booked for homeless to stay until 'alternative accommodation could be found'. These drunk, smelly men banged on my door all night. No one 'monitored' them, no one told them to stop, they seemed to be have been dropped off and left to do whatever the hell they wanted.
They were loud, obnoxious and I was scared to leave my room to go to dinner. I phoned my office, told them there was no way in hell I was staying at that place but due to the time I couldn't leave that night as no more trains or flights until morning. All night I sat in my room, wide awake terrified wondering if they would be able to break into my room. The next morning I got all my things, cracked my door open slightly to see if anyone was in the corridor. At the same time, the door opposite opened slightly and a woman looked across at me. Turns out, we had both spent a terrifying night, wide awake and hoping to escape by morning. We decided to go together. There were drunk, smelly men sprawled out on the floor whom we stepped over all the way down the corridor towards the elevator. Fortunately, no one got into the elevator with us and we both made it safely downstairs and checked out without eating our pre-paid for breakfast.
I walked to the station and took the first train home. After that experience I no longer cared about the meetings I just wanted to feel safe. My office (fortunately) understood and were extremely apologetic for booking me into that hotel as they had no idea who the other guests would be. My office have since cancelled their account with that hotel and haven't used it since. I will never book that hotel chain again either.
It's shocking that someone could pay for a room, thinking it will be a nice, clean place to stay and turn up to find drunks, drug addicts and potentially dangerous groups staying. I would have been fuming if I'd personally paid for the week and then had to find somewhere else to stay because the hotel wasn't safe. (not for the guests and probably not for the staff)
Homelessness is a problem and I don't know what the solution is, but booking these people into 'nice' hotels isn't helping anyone.