The policy failure that is homelessness in America continues to rage on. It was recently announced that the Supreme Court has ruled in favor of lifting the rent moratorium and now tens of millions of Americans are at risk of being evicted. In the midst of a pandemic, people are being forced to find shelter wherever they can.
In The New York Times docu-short Hotel 22, viewers are taken through a bus ride through Silicon Valley — the region a part of the place that The United Nations has described its homelessness crisis as a “violation of human rights” — one night as a group of homeless people uses the 24-hour bus service as a mobile shelter. Not much happens in the documentary that runtime is just under ten minutes. We do get a chance to see moments of tensions such as a passenger bickering with the driver to turn on the heat and another when passengers get into a brief heated verbal exchange with one another that results in racial slurs being hurled.
There’s no moralizing tone to the filmmaker’s lens. In fact, the film takes a decidedly neutral position on such a polarizing issue. The voyeuristic gaze feels most honest to the way people view people who are homeless — interested but unmoved. By the morning time, the people on the bus are forced off and we are left right where the documentary starts off: at a bus stop waiting for the next bus to arrive.
