Security guards at a Baltimore hotel used as a winter shelter knocked on doors early Thursday telling people to leave amid freezing temperatures, advocates for people experiencing homelessness said.

Evicting the guests staying at the Fairfield Inn, which serves as a city shelter for single females, couples and families during extreme weather, was “inhumane” and highlighted confusion over policies regarding housing the homeless, activists said.

The Mayor’s Office of Homeless Services did not respond to multiple calls and emails requesting comment on the incident at the hotel, where homeless advocate Christina Flowers and former mayoral candidate Zulieka Baysmore said the hotel’s armed security guards started knocking on doors at 6 a.m. Thursday telling shelter residents to leave.

Flowers said a group of people staying there gathered into one room and remained at the hotel until she — and Baltimore Police — arrived at around 8:30 a.m.

Flowers and Baysmore took the group, which they said was mostly mothers and children, to the Liberty Rec & Tech Center to keep warm. A police spokesperson said officers had responded at 8:23 a.m. to a “disorderly” call at the hotel, with a caller stating that “two males were refusing to leave.”

“We can’t have contractors … doing the wrong thing and committing inhumane acts on our most vulnerable citizens here in Baltimore City,” said Baysmore, who ran for local office as a Republican in 2020 and 2022 and said she left politics “to actually be on the grounds in Baltimore.”

Baltimore’s latest winter shelter plan, which activates a variety of daytime and overnight shelters throughout the city when it’s below freezing, says that nighttime accommodations are offered from 4 p.m. until 9 a.m. the next morning. Temperatures were in the 20s at BWI for most of Wednesday evening and reached the low teens — under 13 degrees — at around 6 a.m. Thursday, according to the National Weather Service.

The city’s winter shelters were activated from Tuesday to Thursday, and are again in place Friday afternoon until next Thursday, Jan. 23 amid more freezing weather.

In practice, the time when those staying at the city’s overnight shelters must leave varies between five locations, said Flowers, who directs the homelessness assistance group Belvedere Real Care Providers. On Sunday, guards started knocking on doors at 7 a.m., Baysmore said, calling operations in Baltimore’s shelter system “chaotic.”

“You can’t change the rules on people at 6 [a.m.] in the morning,” Flowers said in front of the hotel. Baysmore said she requested the City Council hold a hearing probing oversight at its shelters.

“They need to retrain their staff,” she said. “You can’t have been sending armed security banging at the door … and demanding that women with children leave the hotel.”

Spokespeople for Marriott International, which owns the hotel, did not return a request for comment.

Since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, Baltimore officials have relied on local hotels to house homeless residents. Last year, the city purchased two other downtown hotels using $15.2 million in American Rescue Plan Act funds to serve as shelters for people experiencing homelessness. An investigation by the city’s inspector general last year found that the city overpaid vendors providing food and other services to shelter residents at one of the hotels by more than $460,000.

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