The Olsens, Richards says, understand doing business on the fringes. They know their customers. They know what they require (and it isn't mints on the pillow). They haven't attempted to turn the Regis and the Cambridge — or the now-defunct Windsor, a third hotel in the property that has closed since the RDA took over — into the Ritz but have allowed them to be what they are.

They work with people on their rent, they help people who ask for help, they don't talk down to the residents and they don't ask too many questions.

They are not the government.

"People have been treated very well over the years," says Richards. "There is a subculture here that works the way it is and it would be hard (for it to work) anywhere else. No one seems to understand that."

No one, that is, on the outside, where the tendency when sizing up the old hotels is to see, and smell, nothing but the smoke-stained walls, and not notice what's living in between.

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Lee Benson's column runs Sunday, Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Please send e-mail to benson@desnews.com and faxes to 801-237-2527.