Swedish 'Hotel' Lets You Pay to Be Homeless

A Swedish organization is offering visitors a unique hotel experience: They can spend a night as a homeless person for $15. The "hotel," run by Faktum magazine in the city of Gothenburg, has 10 "rooms," including a sleeping bag in a park, a dirty mattress under a bridge, or the floor of a vacant paper mill. There have been some 1,000 bookings since the hotel's establishment in November, the Local reports.

"Few actually make it through the night and we had a very cold, harsh winter. But some really tried, with one woman managing to stay for about four hours," says the magazine's editor. "A couple of guests ... told me that it made them appreciate their every day life in a new way. The simple things like a warm bed, a roof, and a job." But the local government doesn't love the project, he notes. "We really want to raise awareness of the homeless situation so that our politicians will take action," he says. But "they like to think that everything is fine in our city." (More Sweden stories.)