The Arthur Street Hotel on Nov. 14, 2024.(Jon Cherry / LPM )Since opening its doors in 2022, the Arthur Street Hotel has helped more than 400 people transition from the streets into housing.The group of case managers and advocates who operate the former Days Inn worked with people who are considered some of the hardest to reach — people who had been living unsheltered for years, many with addiction or mental health needs. And staff found success in building a community there, helping people stabilize and reintegrate.At its height, Arthur Street had 70-80 guests living at the hotel at any given time. But that era of the hotel appears to be coming to an end.Susan Buchino, the executive director of C.A.R.E, the nonprofit that runs Arthur Street, said they’ve been in the process of winding down operations since last year, when they learned that their primary funder, the affordable housing developer LDG, would pull back support. Buchino said they expect they will close their doors around June 30, when some of their other grants are set to run out.“We are a community asset,” Buchino said. “We serve law enforcement and the healthcare system. We serve the community, not just the population that we directly work with. If Arthur Street goes away, all those services will be lost, as well as our expertise.”Buchino and some other hotel staff recently launched a last-minute campaign to ask Louisville Metro Council to provide them with $1 million.That would allow them to keep the doors open, Buchino said, but the Arthur Street Hotel would likely not look like the same operation that’s been filling a unique gap in the community over the last four years.“It might mean that we are diminished to a day shelter without the overnight capacity for a little while as we continue to work toward other sustainable solutions,” she said. “We know that this isn’t going to solve all of our problems, financially, but solutions take time.”Buchino said they might seek federal funding through the Continuum of Care Program, as well Medicaid reimbursements and foundation grants.Support for programs like Arthur Street, which take a “housing first” approach that doesn’t require sobriety as a precondition to shelter, has been waning under President Donald Trump’s administration.Susan Buchino working in her office at the Arthur Street Hotel in Louisville, Kentucky on October 7, 2024. (Jon Cherry / LPM)Despite numerous studies that show these programs are more effective at getting people off the streets compared to programs with more barriers to entry, Housing and Urban Development Secretary Scott Turner said the federal government was moving away from the model in a  news release last month."HUD is restoring its programs to advance recovery and self-sufficiency and to ensure that taxpayer-funded benefits serve American families,” Turner said.If the Arthur Street Hotel does not get funding from Metro Council, which would let it buy a little time to figure out a long-term plan, advocates say Louisville will lose a unique resource for addressing homelessness.Former hotel guest Sandy Scott spoke at a press conference last week hosted by the advocacy group VOCAL Kentucky. Scott, who lived at the hotel from 2022 to 2024, said Arthur Street was “the place that changed everything for me.”“When I got to Arthur Street, I wasn’t just handed a room, I was handed safety, stability,” Scott said. “I was handed the things that people take for granted: a bed, food, a door that locks, a place where I could breathe without looking over my shoulder.”Scott said Arthur Street staff helped her to get her birth certificate and state ID, which allowed her to access housing support. Now in permanent housing, she said she’s working on her GED and enrolled in a certificate program at Goodwill Kentucky.“Arthur Street gave me the foundation to rebuild my life,” Scott said. “They didn’t look at me like a case file. They looked at me like a person who had survived things that most people don’t understand. They saw potential in me before I could see it in myself and that changed my mindset even more.”In addition to the $1 million ask of Louisville Metro Council, the Arthur Street Hotel staff and LDG Development, which owns the property, have been speaking with Mayor Craig Greenberg’s administration about other options.They’ve discussed turning the hotel rooms into housing units for a permanent supportive housing program. That would provide housing as well as case management, addiction treatment and mental health services to people who need extra support.Christi Lanier-Robinson, a spokesperson for LDG, said city support is necessary for Arthur Street to continue operating as a 501(c)3 nonprofit.All nonprofits in the U.S. must pass a “public support test” to ensure the broader community is invested in them. The IRS requires nonprofits to get a third of their funding from public sources over a five-year period.Lanier-Robinson said LDG continues to fund about 80-85% of Arthur Street’s budget. Support from the city, she said, could help it pass the test.“We would hope that if the mayor is investing in initiatives like Home for Good and the Community [Care] Campus, that we could be a part of those efforts to produce the best possible outcomes,” Lanier-Robinson said.LPM’s Roberto Roldan recently sat down with Arthur Street co-director Susan Buchino in studio to discuss what closing the hotel would mean for Louisville’s homeless services. An excerpt of that conversation, edited for length and clarity, is below.RR: The Arthur Street Hotel is specialized in working with folks who are considered chronically homeless. They've been on the streets for years. Some have addiction or mental health needs. How have you all been able to help these folks transition from the streets into permanent housing?SB: The average guest at the Arthur Street Hotel has been on the street for four years and has the behavioral health issues that you might imagine someone who has to sleep outside and worry about their daily survival has, and so what we specifically do is work on reconnection with community. We can offer people a safe door with a hotel room and break down the barriers to getting into shelter to begin with, and start to establish trusting relationships, which is why we really focus with a high staff to client ratio, because the folks we serve are in crisis every day.RR: And how many folks have you all helped get from the streets into housing since Arthur Street opened in 2022?SB: 413.RR: When photographer Jon Cherry and I were there in 2024 producing our series for LPM about the hotel, there were about 70 or 80 guests at any given time. How many are there now? And how have things changed in the last couple years?SB: Currently, we're at 26. We still have that general capacity as far as rooms. So, what has changed is that we haven't done intakes since April. I've had to reduce my case management staff and not replace people who have left, and that then reduces our overall support capacity, so we can't bring people in.RR: And what happens to the folks who are currently at Arthur Street who aren't going to move into housing in the next 30 days, little bit less now? What are some of the challenges that they are going to face that make it harder for them to find a new place to live?SB: We have six people right now that I'm aware of that do not have concrete plans for housing. We will work with other agencies to see what opportunities there are for them, if they are somebody who would be appropriate and would accept going into an emergency shelter, we will certainly help create that warm handoff, but honestly, I'm guessing that most of them would choose to return to the streets because they don't feel safe in emergency shelters.RR: Is there any way that the Arthur Street Hotel would be able to continue operating in its current form or in some other different form beyond the end of June?SB: We are looking at the possibility of being able to continue to keep our lobby open during the day as a drop-in center, We are looking at the possibility of partnering with different organizations who do have funding for temporary or transitional housing, hopefully we'll be able to continue at some capacity and offer supportive servicesRR: All of the potential things that you've outlined doesn’t sound like that period of 2022 to 2024, you know, housing 80+ people at a time, transitioning over 100 people a year into housing. It seems like that's probably lost in the near-term. What do you think that Louisville is losing when that era of Arthur Street comes to an end?SB: Housing is the solution to homelessness, but if…I tell you, ‘I'm getting you into housing,’ but I can't find you, and you can't use your voucher in the next 90 days, and you can't take a shower, and I can't get you to go in the car to look at apartments, and the paperwork takes forever to process, and inspections may be three weeks. All of that takes time, and so if someone continues to live on the street for the three or four months while they're waiting for this promised housing, they might not get it.Correction: This story has been updated to reflect that Susan Buchino is the executive director of C.A.R.E. ...read more read less