Overextended Stay: People living in long-term residential hotels fight
evictions to avoid homelessness
[link removed]
Esther Schrader | Read the full piece here
[link removed]
Friend,
The private security guard, armed with an assault rifle, moved swiftly
through the dingy halls of the extended-stay, residential hotel
outside of Atlanta on a crisp fall day.
He banged on one door after another, pointing the rifle at longtime
residents and forcing them to leave.
The stunning evictions terrified people living at Efficiency Lodge in
Decatur, Georgia. Many of them are low-income workers and families
with young children who had made the lodge home for years because they
had no other option besides living on the street. Only the emergency
efforts of a local church ensured that they had beds to sleep in that
night in September 2020.
"I never seen nothing like that in my life, just to put a person
out on the street," one resident, Armetrius Neason, told The
Associated Press
[link removed]
.
Neason, a carpenter, had lived in the hotel for five years, in a room
with a small kitchen he had carefully decorated - until the
security guard came with the gun.
"You had to go then," Neason said.
Neason and two other tenants are plaintiffs in a lawsuit filed against
the hotel's owners by the Atlanta Legal Aid Society. The suit
contends that because the residents lived there for months or even
years, they should be given the same rights as tenants in apartments
or houses. Their attorneys argue that the expulsions violate laws
designed to protect tenants.
Most of the tenants who were forced out never got to return. But
Neason and one other tenant are living at the hotel again. A judge
ruled that they must be considered tenants under the law and
prohibited Efficiency Lodge from kicking them out without filing an
eviction in court. The hotel owners are appealing the ruling.
The Southern Poverty Law Center, along with the Atlanta-based
tenants' rights organization Housing Justice League, the Atlanta
Volunteer Lawyers Foundation and three academic experts who study
housing inequalities, filed an amicus
"friend-of-the-court" brief
[link removed]
in August, supporting the tenants.
"These sorts of extended-stay hotels can provide a source of
stable, safe housing for folks, many of them low-income Black and
Brown folks, who otherwise would be on the street," said Emily
Early, senior supervising attorney for the SPLC's Economic
Justice Project. "As a matter of law and a matter of morality,
these are their homes and they have the right to have them protected.
These sorts of places should be not only extending the same sorts of
protections that other renters enjoy, but absolutely providing a safe
and comfortable environment for people to live."
How the case is ultimately decided may have far-reaching implications.
Unemployment during the COVID-19 pandemic has made it harder for
millions of Americans to keep up with the rent
[link removed]
.
READ MORE
[link removed]
In solidarity,
Your friends at the Southern Poverty Law Center
The SPLC is a catalyst for racial justice in the South and beyond,
working in partnership with communities to dismantle white supremacy,
strengthen intersectional movements, and advance the human rights of
all people.
Friend, will you make a gift to help the SPLC fight for
justice and equity in courts and combat white supremacy?
DONATE
[link removed]
--
Unsubscribe [link removed] | Privacy Policy [link removed] | Contact Us [link removed]
Southern Poverty Law Center
400 Washington Avenue
Montgomery, AL 36104
334.956.8200 // splcenter.org
[link removed]
Copyright 2021
