Cheap Charlotte hotels are cashing in on the Democratic National Convention by raising rates to up-scale lodging prices and kicking out the homeless who typically rent rooms on a weekly basis. Many homeless customers who have been living at down-market Charlotte hotels for months were sent packing last week to make way for more lucrative patrons. The sudden influx of poor people in need of a bed overwhelmed emergency shelters and churches, according to the Huffington Post .
Lakia Ramsey, 26, was paying approximately $200 per week at an inexpensive motel near the DNC area. The room rate jumped to $150 per night just before the Democratic delegates and President Barack Obama arrived for the political convention. Ramsey took her toddler daughter and preschool age son to seek shelter at a local church.
Family homelessness rose by 40 percent in 2010 and 20 percent in 2011, according to US Conference of Mayors statistics republished by the New York Daily News .
A homeless mother with four children told the Huffington Post that the daily rate at the hotel where she was living went from $30 per day to $300 per day right before the DNC began.
Belinda Cherry, 41, and her husband, Steve, were also living at a down-market motel until the convention came to town. The husband’s salary from a part-time job as a restaurant dishwasher allowed the struggling couple to afford weekly-based room rates. Unable to pay the vastly increased room fee, the couple was forced to sleep on a loading dock outside an abandoned building. Steve Cherry noted they both voted for President Obama in ’08 and plans to do so again; but is still wondering when help will arrive for people like him who are struggling to get back on their feet.
