From motel rooms to real homes: Addressing Atlanta’s homelessness crisis | Saporta Report
Across Georgia, hundreds of extended-stay motels serve as residences for families and individuals who have few other affordable housing options. An estimated 40,000-50,000 families in the metro area of Georgia consider extended-stay motel rooms their primary residence. A Dekalb study of motel residents conducted by GSU released earlier this year identified 35% of motel occupants are children.
Brian Goldstone’s Pulitzer-prize winning book, There Is No Place for Us: Working and Homeless in America powerfully documents the realities of the working homeless, like those trapped in extended-stay motels. Goldstone challenges readers to examine the systems that trap working families in extended-stay motels, contribute to intergenerational trauma, and make it extraordinarily difficult for families to achieve lasting housing stability. As Atlanta has increasingly come into the national spotlight for its shortage of affordable housing, local nonprofit organizations are partnering with philanthropy and local government to pioneer innovative models to address the issue and create pathways to lasting stability.
A prominent example is St. Vincent de Paul Georgia’s Motel-to-Home (M2H) program, which was developed in 2019 to assist families to exit motels and access stable rental housing.
