Jan 20, 2026
When Georgia grandmother Arilya Romero’s rent went up at the exact moment her contract job evaporated, she felt she had no choice but to move herself, her pregnant daughter and her grandson into an extended-stay hotel.
"It was supposed to be a temporary solution, but it felt like a trap once I got into the hotel," Romero told Fox5 Atlanta (1).
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Romero was working two jobs, barely scraping by and unable to save anything toward a security deposit for permanent housing. What was meant to be temporary stretched on month after month and ultimately cost her more than she had ever paid in rent.
Georgians like Romero are caught in a catch-22. They turn to extended-stay hotels because they cannot afford the upfront costs for an apartment. Because hotels cost far more than rent for a comparable or even larger unit, saving for a security deposit becomes nearly impossible.
According to a new report from Georgia State University, more than 4,600 people, including 1,635 children in DeKalb County alone, are caught in this cycle of unaffordable housing (2, 10).
When temporary solutions last for years
The study, Measuring What’s Been Missed: A Countywide Assessment of Families Living in Extended-Stay Hotels, released in January 2026, found that 45% of residents had lived in hotels for at least one year. More than 16% had stayed in an extended-stay hotel for over five years.
Three out of four of these residents were employed, but financial barriers kept them from moving into conventional housing. Half said they could not afford a security deposit. Three in five said they did not meet the income requirements for an apartment.
Meanwhile, residents spent an average of 77% of their household income on rent, often on a single room (3).
That was Romero’s situation for seven months before she connected with the Single Parent Alliance and Research Centre, or SPARC, and its Motel to Home program, which helped cover move-in costs (4).
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Because nearly 60% of long-term motel residents are single mothers, the program proved to be a natural fit. SPARC is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization whose mission is to empower single parents.
Motel to Home is designed for families with children who find themselves stuck in what advocates often call “shelters of last resort” due to the upfront costs associated with conventional housing (5). Participants must have enough income to maintain rent once they move into permanent homes.
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A nationwide problem
Georgia is far from the only state where long-term hotel stays are taking the place of stable housing, although comprehensive data remains limited.
A study by Texas’ Center for Transforming Lives conducted from 2016 to 2019 found similar trends (6). While extended-stay hotels and motels are considered temporary housing, half of the families surveyed had lived in one for more than six months. Ten percent had lived there for over two years.
Among those unable to move out, 28% cited low credit scores and an inability to afford a deposit as the primary barriers to permanent housing.
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The picture becomes even murkier because the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) generally does not classify people paying for their own hotel or motel rooms as homeless. As a result, they are often excluded from federal housing data.
Under the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act, however, children and youth living in hotels and motels are legally considered homeless and are tracked by schools (7).
According to the Department of Education, 124,164 children were enrolled in school while living in hotels or motels during the 2022-2023 school year (8). That figure represents an increase of 38,742 from the 2020-2021 school year.
It’s an incomplete picture, though, as pre-school children and teens who have dropped out of school are not captured by the data. The Center for Transforming Lives estimated that 2,663 children lived in motels in Tarrant County alone during the 2017-2018 school year (9).
Altogether, the data does suggest that extended-stay hotels have quietly become a stand-in for affordable housing nationwide. For families already living paycheck to paycheck the cost of staying housed, even temporarily, can make it hard to move forward.
Article sources
We rely only on vetted sources and credible third-party reporting. For details, see our editorial ethics and guidelines.
Fox 5 Atlanta (1); GSU Center on Health and Homelessness (2); Single Parent 411 (3, 4, 5); Transforming Lives (6, 9)); National Center for Homeless Education 7, 8); WSB-TV 10).
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Libby MacDonald is a Senior Staff Reporter at Moneywise. She has extensive experience in business and consumer reporting, having covered topics including insurance, wealth management, housing and equities.
