ATLANTA (AP) – For more than five years, the home for Armetrius Neason has been a hotel outside Atlanta. He decorated the walls with dozens of pictures of black stars and icons. It is the address in his driving license and where he receives correspondence.
But last year, as the COVID-19 pandemic erupted, the hotel accused it of owing $ 1,800 in rent and threatened to close it, the 58-year-old said.
“I was making my clothes. I really had nowhere to go, “he recalled during a telephone interview.
Efficiency Lodge said Neason – despite his long stay – was a guest who could release the property without filing an eviction case in court.
“If you go to a Holiday Inn and you don’t pay your room rate, the next day your key won’t work,” said Roy Barnes, a former Georgia governor and lawyer for the lodge, which is co-owned by his brother, Ray Barnes. “It’s the same law.”
Neason’s fighting reflects the increased risk of homelessness faced by motel and hotel residents during the pandemic, housing lawyers say. Many states do not clearly define when hotel and motel guests become tenants – a name held by traditional tenants that gives them the right to challenge an eviction attempt before a judge. Instead, hotel guests can be briefly removed.
The legal gap has made the motel’s home more risky than renting a house just before the pandemic. It’s less stable now, lawyers say. Job losses during the pandemic have made it harder for millions of Americans to rent. But hotel guests are being excluded from a federal moratorium on evacuations for people experiencing financial hardship during the coronavirus outbreak.
Residents of hotels and motels in California, Colorado, Florida, Louisiana, New Jersey and Virginia have reported being evicted or threatened with immediate eviction in the past year.
“People are even more economically vulnerable than most low-income tenants,” said Alexis Erkert, a lawyer at Southeast Louisiana Legal Services in New Orleans, who fought motel evictions during the pandemic.
Hotel owners say they were successful during the COVID-19 outbreak and need paying customers to cover the costs.
“They want their goods and livelihoods to be protected just like anyone else,” said Marilou Halvorsen, president of the New Jersey Restaurant and Hospitality Association.
In another recent hotel dispute in Georgia, Demetress Malone accused Lodge Atlanta staff of removing the door, turning off the power, taking out her air conditioning unit and changing her lock after she had payment problems. rent for the room he had occupied for about a year, according to a lawsuit he filed against the property. A call and email to a lawyer for Lodge Atlanta, Frank C. Bedinger, were not returned. A judge joined Malone in November, saying the hotel must file an eviction case against him in court.
At Efficiency Lodge, a private security guard carried an assault rifle and aimed it at residents as he walked from door to door, forcing them to leave in September, according to Neason’s attorney, Lindsey Siegel, and a lawsuit he and another current resident filed in the property. Siegel is with the Atlanta Legal Aid Society.
“I’ve never seen anything like it in my life, just to take a person out on the street,” Neason said. “You had to leave then.”
Roy Barnes disputed that residents were forced out of the fire, saying security was looking for two people wanted for murder.
Neason, who works as a carpenter, came to the hotel in 2016 and paid his weekly rent of $ 200, but said a hotel employee told him he did not have to pay the full amount during the pandemic. He was later presented with a bill for the rent back, he said.
The living room has a small kitchen with two electric burners. He hung colorful sports caps by hooks in a corner and keeps free weights next to the TV.
Lawyers say the hotel’s resident lawsuits are rare and many other moves are not reported.
“These are people who have already been pushed to their limits, they are broken,” said Eric Tars, legal director of the National Center for the Law of the Homeless. “Many of them assume that ‘I’m just staying as a guest at this motel.'”
Federal data suggests that more and more people are relying on motels and hotels for long-term housing. The number of students in the US who have identified a hotel or motel as their primary residence at night has risen by almost a quarter between the 2015-2016 and 2017-2018 school years to more than 105,000, according to figures provided by the US Department of Education. .
But the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention excludes hotels or motels rented to a “temporary guest or seasonal tenant” – terms left to be defined by local laws – from the eviction moratorium in effect until March. Some states have stepped up to try to protect motel residents.
New Jersey has its own moratorium that explicitly protects people who live continuously in motels and hotels and do not have permanent housing in which to return safely or legally. Halvorsen said dozens of hotels reported customers taking advantage of the stricter rule by checking in and then refusing to pay or leave.
The North Carolina Attorney General’s Office warned nearly 100 hotels and motels in the state at the start of the pandemic that their residents may qualify as tenants. The Georgia Law Department provided similar guidance.
But housing experts say that without a clearly defined rule about when a hotel stay is no longer temporary or seasonal, residents of these properties remain vulnerable to rapid eviction when they cannot pay.
In January, a DeKalb County judge ruled that Neason was a tenant and blocked the cottage from evacuating him without appearing in court. The lodge appealed.
“Who do you fire and who is forcibly executed if no one pays?” Roy Barnes asked. “This is not a good problem on the other hand.”