Westword - East Colfax Motel Hell

The homeless recieve another blow as the track of hotels on East Colfax move out for developers. Luke Turf from The Westword follows the story and the families affected by this latest development.

MOTEL HELL -Looking through the window of room 105 at the Dunes Motel, Amy Limon could see the kids playing outside. She opened the door and slowly navigated her wheelchair down a wooden ramp that she'd had the motel maintenance guy install. The parking lot was littered with cigarette butts, empty beer cans and soda bottles, abandoned shopping carts and old mattresses. A doll lay on the ground, caked in soot and dirt. Two of the kids from room 226 were playing on a car; a boy from room 325 was shooting a half-deflated football through a basket that was really just a cardboard box tied to the second-floor balcony with a dirty pink ribbon. Usually the five kids who called 226 home were forbidden from playing in the dirty lot, just like the kids who lived in room 325. But the Dunes was closing for good on April 1, and both families were giving their children a little leeway now that most of the motel's addicts, dealers, gangsters, hookers, crazies and other shady characters had vacated the premises.

The cockroaches and bedbugs weren't checking out, though, and as residents left the motel, many abandoned clothing, sofas and beds, stuff the Korean conglomerate that sold the place had bought dirt-cheap from garbage pickers. The motel's new owners didn't care if their "guests" had lived at the Dunes two days or two years; anyone who wanted the furniture was welcome to take it with them. But no one did. "Go away or die," someone had written on one of the motel-room doors.

WESTWORD