Why Do Low Income Families Live in Hotels

By Michael E. Kanell

NORCROSS, Ga. – They came to metro Atlanta with hopes of a new life, renting a business firm in Duluth and enrolling their two children in school while they looked for jobs — she in medical assistants, he selling cars.

It took longer than they expected to find piece of work.

Long plenty that Maria and Tony Fernandez had problem paying their rent and were evicted. Looking for a stopgap, they checked in to an extended-stay hotel in Norcross, paying $200 a week. They were like many low-wage workers who have had spotty credit or a patch of bad luck, who tin't get a decent apartment.

"We thought, well, 90 days and nosotros are out of hither," Tony said. "Merely the chore state of affairs didn't get ameliorate."

Six years afterwards, they have jobs, their son is working and living on his ain, their daughter is a senior in loftier school and the three of them notwithstanding live in a motel room. "If you are lonely, this is a good place, merely if y'all have a family, there is only no privacy," Maria said.

And now, a national coronavirus crunch has made the state of affairs in extended stay even more precarious. With massive job losses expected, the federal government has moved to forbid — at least temporarily — evictions of renters and foreclosures of homeowners who cannot make monthly payments.

Someone living in a motel has no protection.

Maria and Tony are still working. They plan to have an flat by mid-April as part of Motel to Dwelling house, a twelvemonth-long pilot program aimed at moving xx families from extended stay to apartments. Subsequently that, participants will be responsible for their ain rent, only Motel to Home will assistance pay for — and guide them through — the move.

United Way and the metropolis of Norcross are splitting the $50,000 cost of the programme, while St. Vincent de Paul of Georgia provides trained volunteers as caseworkers.

"The apartment isn't the goal," said Denise Fisher, an SVdP volunteer and the program's manager. "The goal is stable housing."

And the urgency has increased. A motel tin can toss out a invitee who misses one day's payment.

"They'll live in their automobile," Fisher said. "If they have a motorcar."

A spokesman for Intown Suites, 1 of the larger extended-stay chains, said Mon that the company is juggling priorities.

"We are exploring all options to support our guests during these unprecedented times while seeking to ensure we tin go along effectively running our establishments, provide outstanding service to all in-house guests and pay our staff," he said.

A spokesman for Extended Stay America offered similar sentiments.

"We are currently evaluating many options to support our hotel guests while working to ensure we can continue to provide excellent service, take intendance of our associates and maintain loftier standards at our properties, while providing a safe and clean surround for guests and associates," he said.

Reddish Roof Inn, which owns HomeTowne Studios, said Mon that the individual motels are independent franchisees. Just Red Roof said information technology is recommending that they provide an unspecified "grace catamenia" for guests who cannot pay. United Way previously jointly funded a similar programme with the city of College Park and had a 75% success charge per unit, said Protip Biswas, vice president for homelessness at United Way of Greater Atlanta.

The situation is common. While at that place are no hard data, social agencies and local officials say thousands of working families in metro Atlanta alive in hotels — generally paying by the week or even by the mean solar day.

At that place are at least 10,000 families in extended-stay motels, "but maybe it's 20,000 or 30,000," Biswas said.

"They are working poor. We tend to ignore them because they are not homeless yet. No one has done a study, except in Norcross. And that was an eye-opener."

Norcross, bisected by several highways, has a high concentration of motels. Buses come to the motels, picking up children in the early morning time when school is open, dropping them off in the afternoon.

The Gwinnett Housing Corp. sent workers to knock on doors at the hotels over the form of 2 months, said Lejla Prljaca, chief executive. The consequence: 84% of those that answered were living there, she said. "Quite a few of the hotels are 100% occupied past families. And the vast majority of them work."

While Norcross has a high concentration of extended-stay hotels — xiv — it is not unique.

Michael Murphy, chairman'south banana for special projects in Cobb County, said Cobb has not yet been able to carry out a like survey, just he thinks the results would be parallel.

"I think it'southward a widespread problem," he said.

Murphy estimates that the canton has nearly 30 extended-stay hotels and motels, averaging almost 100 rooms each with roughly 1-third of them occupied by families. School buses normally pick upwardly and drop off students at the hotels.

"The schools very concerned," he said. "And then many children are in these extended stays. Information technology just boggles the mind."

It'southward non a adept situation for adults, but for children, information technology's a recipe for trouble: cramped arrangements, little privacy, no play space and in some hotels, loftier rates of crime.

Families in metro Atlanta extended stays typically pay between $200 and $325 a week.

What they pay the motel is frequently equally much as they would pay for hire for minor housing. And money, of course, is a big office of the problem: four of 10 metro Atlanta workers make less than $fifteen.40 an hour – roughly $32,000 a year, which is $ii,667 a calendar month – according to the Brookings Institution. The median hire for a two-sleeping accommodation apartment in Norcross is nigh $1,390 a month, co-ordinate to Apartment List.

That ways families are stretching each month, and so an unexpected expense — a car, a medical problem — tin spin them into malversation and eviction.

And once you've lost an flat, information technology tin can be expensive to get another one. Typically, landlords crave that prospective tenants pay a security deposit along with a month'due south rent — as well equally application fees.

Many workers who could afford to pay the monthly rent struggle to come up with the $ii,000 to $3,000 needed to start renting again. The Norcross program helps participants past fronting those payments to the landlord.

The programme provides weekly sessions with Clearpoint, a non-for-profit agency that offers financial counseling. Each participant also has a St. Vincent instance worker to help them, Fisher said.

"Information technology's a whole dissimilar experience when you have a case worker who takes you by the manus and says, 'Let's go to Clearpoint and discover out how to handle finances,' or who says, 'I'm going to go with you to accept a look at apartments.'"

Non all communities accept the same perspective.

Snellville, which has simply ane long-term stay hotel, recently passed a metropolis ordinance that limits how long guests tin be at an extended stay: 180 days consecutively is the maximum.

Proponents said the issue was condom, citing a government study that found extended-stay hotels oftentimes became hubs for sex trafficking, prostitution and drug violations.

The Gwinnett County Solicitor General recently cited similar concerns about the number of crimes committed at Norcross hotels.

In mid-February, Quwahana Anderson sat on the edge of her bed in a Norcross hotel, where she was paying $280 a week, plus fees for fresh linens. Her ii teenagers slept together in the other bed.

She'd been living at that place since June and, talking about the state of affairs with a reporter, she teared up. "It's difficult. My kids get teased at school, other kids calling them homeless."

She had moved from Macon, finding a task equally a customer-service rep at a large electronics house in Alpharetta and figuring she'd stay merely a few months, she said. "This is the first time I've been in a situation similar this. I never thought of myself as homeless, only that's what information technology is."

Anderson couldn't put together the money she needed as down payment for an apartment. Plus she has a checkered credit history, and she owes several one thousand dollars for courses at a for-profit college.

Only she began working with Motel to Habitation, which offered guidance near personal budgeting, then paid application fees, security deposit and first month'due south rent – almost $2,500 – that she needed for a three-chamber apartment.

A church group helped stock her pantry. Another pledged to bring in furniture. On March 6, she picked upwards her kids and took them to their new dwelling.

Motel to Home made the payment to the landlord, and she has the apartment for $one,050 a month.

The situation has gotten more complicated for the Fernandez family, readying to move into an apartment with the programme'south help. With the spread of the coronavirus, the church group stopped delivering article of furniture, so the family unit will move in without any. They aren't going to wait.

"Information technology's the perfect identify," Maria Fernandez said. "April can't come up fast enough."

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Source: https://www.detroitnews.com/story/business/personal-finance/2020/04/05/working-but-poor-many-families-trapped-extended-stay-hotels/2943123001/

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