New LSC Brief Examines Impact of Extended-Stay Motels on Housing Insecurity
Contact
Carl Rauscher
Director of Communications and Media Relations
rauscherc@lsc.gov
202-295-1615
WASHINGTON—The Legal Services Corporation’s (LSC) Housing Task Force released an issue brief today on the role of extended-stay motels in housing insecurity and instability in the United States. The brief assembles research and legal aid providers’ insights into the reasons many low-income Americans reside in motels long-term and how these businesses often function as landlords without being held to the same legal standards. Legal aid interventions, existing protections and relevant case studies are also highlighted in the brief. Experts from Georgia, Virginia, Nevada, Ohio and Texas provide insights from their states.
In one case in Decatur, Georgia, Lynetrice Preston was a two-year resident of the Efficiency Lodge along with her two daughters and grandson. Preston was threatened with eviction after losing her job in March 2020 and falling behind on rent. With assistance from Atlanta Legal Aid Society, Preston and other residents who had been locked out of their rooms or told to leave filed suit, insisting that the motel was their landlord and thus must abide by state housing laws. The Georgia Court of Appeals agreed that Efficiency Lodge is a landlord and had to go through the formal eviction process if it wanted long-term residents to leave.
The court decision provided a powerful message to extended-stay motel owners that they must provide due process to their residents, and alerted the up to 30,000 working families in the five-county metropolitan Atlanta area who live in motels that they have rights under the law.
Different states have different benchmarks for establishing whether a long-term motel resident qualifies as a legal tenant. In Nevada, protections begin once a person has resided in the motel for 30 consecutive days, while Virginia sets the bar at 90 days. Texas does not set a benchmark, but rather considers a collection of factors including whether the resident receives mail at the motel, how often they make payments and if the motel provides typical services like cleaning and towels.
Where extended-stay motel dwellers do not fit these exact parameters, or where specific parameters are not set, housing advocates worry that these motels create a class of residents who are not protected by landlord-tenant law.
These residents are primarily low-income individuals and families who cannot otherwise find affordable and stable housing—most often they are families with children or elderly residents. In many cases, motels are not significantly less expensive than other rental housing, however they usually do not require deposits, advance rent payments or application fees.
The popularity of living in motels is attributed to factors like the scarcity of affordable housing in many markets, stigmatizing background records—eviction, foreclosure, criminal charges or an attempted eviction—that serve as an obstacle to other rental housing and displacement by natural disasters.
While it is hard to assess the degree to which extended-stay motels are contributing to housing insecurity in the United States, experts agree they are an important factor. Legal aid providers reported that extended-stay motel residents faced an especially high level of lockouts during the COVID-19 pandemic because eviction moratoria did not apply to these living situations.
Living in an extended-stay motel often subjects residents to overcrowding and habitability issues, unreliable utilities and adverse impacts on children due to problems associated with elevated levels of criminal activity. Yet perhaps the biggest challenge for residents is the near-constant threat of eviction and homelessness.
Across the country, legal aid providers and private attorneys are joining with residents, organizers, policymakers and others to protect residents of extended-stay motels from homelessness and reduce the impact of these facilities on housing instability.
Legal aid providers interviewed for the issue brief have worked to raise awareness of these issues with low-income communities, especially, through social media, “know your rights” trainings, factsheets and other resources given to motel residents, alongside education and outreach to motel owners about their obligations to long-term residents under the law. Some have also trained local law enforcement to increase their understanding of relevant housing laws, so that reporting officers know not to support illegal eviction of long-term motel residents without due process.
“Through our Housing Task Force briefs, LSC is highlighting areas where low-income Americans are too often falling through the cracks in the legal system in ways that lead to increasing housing insecurity and instability,” said LSC President Ron Flagg.
“Legal aid organizations are working hard to address the cracks, but they can’t do it alone—we must listen to these experts when they tell us about the resources and policy changes that will strengthen their communities,” Flagg continued.
LSC launched the Housing Task Force in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, which significantly increased demand for civil legal assistance with housing issues. 2021 was the first year that LSC grantees handled more housing cases than any other legal problem area. The Housing Task Force is documenting challenges that low-income tenants and homeowners experience and sharing its findings about housing insecurity and the role of civil legal aid in helping low-income individuals and families achieve stability and security in a four-part series of issue briefs. The first brief examined illegal evictions, the second brief covered manufactured housing and the final brief will be about contracts for deeds.