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This story is part of The Extended Stay Trap, a series that unpacks the overlapping challenges keeping families in Clayton County—and across Georgia—stuck in extended-stay motels when they want safe, stable homes.
For a single mom, juggling a low-paying job with high rents and expensive childcare often means dropping a ball. That’s why Tanisha Moreno and her kids keep ending up in extended-stay hotels.
Moreno, who is raising six children, earns just $10 per hour working at the front desk of an extended-stay motel in Clayton County. That’s not enough to cover rent, she said.
Even working full time, which gives Moreno a monthly income of about $1,730, she was still barely able to pay the rent on her last apartment at the Tara Woods Apartments in Jonesboro. “I’m making maybe $10 an hour and the rent is $1,516. There’s no way I can afford that every month, trying to survive with kids,” she said.
Moreno has been evicted multiple times because she can’t afford to pay the rent on top of food, childcare, and healthcare. Each eviction makes it more difficult to qualify for an apartment. Between leases, she and her family squeeze into a single room in an extended-stay hotel whenever she has more than $400, the typical weekly rate. When she doesn’t, they live with relatives or in her car.
It costs the same or more for an extended-stay hotel room than an apartment, but Moreno doesn’t have many options. And the longer she stays in a hotel, the longer she’s unable to save money towards renting an apartment.
“I’m making maybe $10 an hour and the rent is $1,516. There’s no way I can afford that every month, trying to survive with kids.”
Tanisha Moreno
Widening wage gap
In Georgia the minimum wage of $7.25 per hour, or $15,080 annually, is just a third of the living wage of $23.90 per hour, or $50,000 annually, that a single adult in Clayton needs to support themselves, according to the MIT Living Wage Calculator. And that is working full time, with no vacations.
Factor in three kids, and a single adult in Clayton needs to make a living wage of $56.30 per hour, or $117,000 annually. Moreno, whose six children range in age from nine to 19, makes only a fraction of that, at about $21,000 annually, assuming she takes no days off. (MIT’s living wage data doesn’t calculate expenses for a single adult with more than three children.)
In fact, Moreno’s $21,000 annual income is about the same as the housing cost alone for a Clayton mom with three kids: $1,840 per month, or $22,000 per year, according to the MIT Living Wage Calculator.
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Clayton County Chief Magistrate Judge Keisha Wright Hill oversees the county’s eviction cases, so she sees the situations for a lot of low-income tenants. Clayton has the highest poverty level of any metro Atlanta county, so the eviction rate is high.
Building more housing isn’t enough to keep lower-earning moms like Moreno in an apartment, Wright Hill said, because of the widening gap between rents and wages. “You keep increasing the rent, but the wages are staying the same. You can build all the properties you want, but if you’re not increasing your salaries, who’s going to be able to afford these?” she asked.
“No one can live off of $7.25 an hour, even if they work full time, so setting a minimum wage where somebody could actually afford to live, [working] a full-time job, would help,” said Lindsey Siegel, who represented people facing eviction for many years at Atlanta Legal Aid.
Providing subsidized or free childcare would also help, Siegel added. “Then people could get jobs where they don’t pay more in childcare to have a job,” she said. As a reference point, a single mom with three kids in Clayton can expect to spend just over $22,000 per year on rent and about $24,500 on childcare, according to the MIT Living Wage Calculator.
“If I could just get a job and know that my daughter is safe during the day while I work.”
Denise Parker
The childcare bind
Moreno’s adult daughter Denise Parker, who has a six-year-old daughter, said she’s struggling to find a new job because she can’t afford childcare, which costs about $11,000 per year in Clayton. Parker’s previous job as a technical support representative for Apple allowed her to work from home, but she was fired when she had to take two weeks off for a surgery.
Without an income, Parker lost her apartment. Now she splits time between a relative’s house and extended-stay hotels. While school was out over the summer, she couldn’t look for a new job because she had to take care of her daughter.
Having a free summer-school program would help, Parker said, or a job that pays enough to afford childcare. “If I could just get a job and know that my daughter is safe during the day while I work,” she added, she could start saving money for an apartment.
The high cost of childcare keeps a lot of single moms from getting higher wage, full-time jobs that cover apartment rent, said Sonia Davis, the coordinator for Clayton County Public Schools’ Homeless Education Department.
Even for parents with children in school at the Pre-K to 12 levels, Davis said, the lack of childcare “will prevent them from becoming stable or getting a job.”
Through the Homeless Education Department, Clayton’s public school system provides free summer school and after-school programs to a limited number of families, Davis said. But there isn’t enough funding to expand these programs to all of the families that need it – including parents with infants and toddlers. Davis said the school system can only refer them to outside charities for affordable or free childcare.
“If we have more money, we could do more services,” she said. One of her top priorities would be to expand childcare and after school programs for Clayton parents.
