In a very unpopular move, the Mesa City Council voted to purchase the Grand Inn Hotel on Power Road and Main Street. The hotel has 70 rooms, all of which will be used exclusively for housing the homeless.
Mesa is making the purchase with a Federal grant from the America Rescue Plan Act (ARPA), signed into law by President Joe Biden on March 11, 2021.
The public was largely asleep on this until it was reported in The Mesa Tribune.
Today, just two months later, neighborhood residents are mostly up in arms, worried about increasing crime and safety.
With so much available land in Mesa, residents question the wisdom of dropping a homeless shelter directly into the midst of an established residential neighborhood.
The Mesa Police spokesman says that crime in the area will drop because of a continuous police presence at the facility. Who pays for the increased presence of police? Taxpayers. Will this drain resources from other parts of the city? Likely so.
The purchase of the hotel will not be consummated until October for a number of reasons, so there is still time to derail the plan and send the City Council back to the drawing board.
