Sue Sullivan sells million-dollar homes for Palmer House Properties, but she’s become a crusader for metro Atlanta’s most marginalized residents—especially those forced to make extended-stay hotel rooms their homes.
Too often, Sullivan told Atlanta Civic Circle, people living in extended-stay hotels wind up living on the streets. She wants to help dismantle the hotel-to-homeless pipeline, which stems from Atlanta’s critical need for more affordable housing.
Many extended-stay residents pay as much as $300 a week for a hotel room—which is more than rent at a typical one-bedroom apartment—but they can’t find decent apartments because they don’t make enough money or because their credit scores are poor.
Sullivan learned about the obstacles that keep people trapped in extended-stay hotels when she was working with her local YMCA to help hotel residents get food, toiletries, clothing, and other household necessities.
“It opened my eyes to this whole world,” she said. But she started to feel like she was on a “one-woman crusade.” Local nonprofits and governments, Sullivan said, must sharply ramp up their outreach efforts and invest more in affordable housing to keep people from becoming permanent hotel residents—because it’s the “last step” before homelessness, she warned.
The Southern Poverty Law Center estimates over 25,000 hotel rooms in metro Atlanta have become either permanent or semi-permanent residences for low-income renters, according to an amicus brief that it filed in a lawsuit brought by three residents fighting eviction from the Efficiency Lodge in DeKalb County.
Sullivan knows she’s not the only one in town trying to aid hotel residents. “Hotel-to-Home” programs run by United Way of Greater Atlanta, St. Vincent de Paul Georgia, and New Life Community Ministries work to rehouse people in safe, stable apartments—but they can each handle only a few hundred cases each year.
Sullivan particularly worries about the children of families who’ve run out of options and must move into extended-stay motels.
“The parking lot is the playground that is shared with drug deals, guns, and prostitution,” she said. “Many children remain hidden behind closed drapes to keep them safe.”
Families that turn to extended-stay hotels for shelter end up in a cycle of impermanence because they are constantly searching for cheaper options, Sullivan said.
But cheaper tends to mean more dangerous for their health and safety—more infested with pests, mold, and crime.
“These hotels are not much better than Forest Cove,” she said, referring to the infamous southside apartment complex where the city only last week finished relocating roughly 200 families—many with children.
Frequent moves can be detrimental to children’s educational opportunities and mental health, Sullivan said.
Students uprooted from one school district and enrolled in another are likely to face a new curriculum with different expectations: Maybe their old school was teaching multiplication tables, but at their new school, they’re expected to know long division.
Compounding the issue are the scarcity of resources specifically for extended-stay hotels and the lack of awareness of what’s available to them. People living in extended-stay hotels have legal rights as tenants, but many don’t know about them, according to Lindsey Siegel, the Atlanta Legal Aid Society attorney who leads the organization’s housing advocacy program.
The Efficiency Lodge case helped further establish these rights for people in Georgia who have made hotel rooms their permanent residences by moving in their belongings, receiving mail there, and having their kids picked up there by the school bus, among other actions.
In that case, Atlanta Legal Aid sued Efficiency Lodge on behalf of three tenants threatened with eviction. The Georgia Court of Appeals in March ruled that the renters and others like them must be legally recognized as tenants—not guests—and thus are entitled to renter protections, such as a right to a formal eviction process through court proceedings. (Former Georgia governor and attorney Roy Barnes, who represents Efficiency Lodge, is appealing the ruling.)
Many extended-stay hotel operators don’t make a formal eviction filing when they want to remove residents. Instead, they conduct what are called “self-help evictions,” by changing the locks or moving renters’ belongings out of their rooms.
In most of those cases, Siegel said, the renters “would become homeless if they were kicked out.”
It’s an uphill battle trying to place people stuck in hotel rooms in affordable apartments, Sullivan said, but educating extended-stay tenants about their rights and available options is a start.
“I don’t know how to help these families get out of there, unless they know they have more rights or more resources available to them,” she said.
suffering with disabilities of health is enough, let alone being disregarded, disrespected, redirected, denied, and refused appropriate accommodations, repairs, and immediate assistance when experience a hazardous health crisis in the unit of a hotel. For both staff and Management to play a role in neglecting the duties for something personal and or unreasonable has been a hardship of oppression, I have to face alone. But to be dismissive and denying and depriving of repairs and opportunity to share the same quality care as switching ones room for betterment and safety, while paying consistently, helping the community and place of stay with indoor/outdoor upkeep and helping guest and staff, yet overlooked, isolated, and intentionally refused services and accommodation to prevent health concerns, and to be forced out of the hotel, repeatedly locked out, given filthy lien and refused to exchange them on a regular basis to be verbally demeaned, shoved, items thrown at profanity and such language used is abusive in both their position and to myself.
To communicate this to management and be retaliated on for communicating and sharing lack of equal treatment, clean, safe, secure living condition and have to pay for space in which one can not enjoy and or come back to properly rest for being locked out is traumatizing in itself.. Yes, I need help, but calling Corporate and Relations Department they only seek to send my call back to the person and persons in question so they’re handling their own complaint, causing them to retaliate, intimidate, and delay me further and suggest me to leave or go far.”
When calling the dispatched police, I have been told that this is not an emergency and or police matter and have been refused help, when requesting a fire department person to address the refrigeration leak and odors that has caused me to fall out, and to experience tearing eyes, burning nose, throat as well as intolerable intake of smell. Then immediate after requesting help I was told to google non- emergency number and as explained for one I am on another’s phone who doesn’t have WIFI its only allows us to dial 911, and the dispatch not once but multiple times became explosive, screaming and depriving me a right to get help and to question a better alternative. on another day, she again proceeded with the same, yet worse hostile disregards, I have called the ordnance department no one returned call, I have emailed and still days goes by and I am dealing with both odors the refrigeration and now fumigation in which the manager knows that I cannot be in the property when those things needs to be done, and I haven’t been informed. dealing with unannounced entry, repeated lock out and entry, theft, repairs, injury and damage to items, unprofessional threats, verbal, physical abuse and intimidation, retaliation, isolation, unresponsiveness, ignoring and demeaning behaviors, as was as constant redirecting me to leave the front off go to room as if I were a child or some sort of animal. This is beyond hospitality this is clearly a case of prejudiced, neglect, and intent to harm and make unpleasant and they have won.
unable to tolerate smells I have payed consecutively for as long as I can remember our first day, and I have been locked out more times now in recent months then when my son was alive. Though its been here and there then, it is more frequent now. and I am told that they allowed someone investigating sons murder into the room without consent.. I am appalled and aggrieved
Also, management has created a hostile incident of events between me and the exterminator whom he advised to force his way in and place the chemicals around while he send me to the office to speak.! How unthoughtful, and unsafe the matter quickly went from 100 to ) and I felt my life was in danger, I began to use my Domestic Violence Survival Skills and quickly stare him away from the cause of action he was taken by force and asked him to breathe and pay attention to the matter he had been shouting and speaking and lets began again, repeating it over and over until he took a different stance, I had to ask him repeatedly to stop thrusting his two extended and full arms art me holding chemicals and remove his foot which he had lodged in the door to prevent me from closing. He began speaking to himself addressing himself by his first name instead of his last name on his uniformed vest. Shocked and afraid, I had him to go to others while I find a meaningful answer and asked him to come back. Which the maintenance man agreed that he could help him get it down if he wanted to, I then let the maintenance man know I’ve heard him… He has no right to enter the property without me being aware of, thereby for a number of days, the property has been fumigated without warning upon return, I have asked other guest to see if it was me or whether it was coming from the refrigerator which had already leaked fluids and exposed me to harm a few weeks ago, but was still plugged up by management request, and haven’t been replaced since nor has my food items lost.
I’m considered homeless, sleeping outside of a place paid for for three consecutive weeks, briefly opening the door to see if air quality has changed. From June 21, 2024 to present July 1215, 2024 no refrigeration and harmed by chemicals and odors as well as lock out denied accommodations and restricted, isolated refused clean linen and services I purchased my own. May the lock out increased again, the theft started back up, the dismissiveness never ended, redirecting me back to my room, and demeaning behavior never ceased. lack of professionalism, skill, knowledge and duty of care has been gravely ignored as well as hospitality and fairness.
This is another incident, I have always paid my rent and bills in advance, but somehow my landowner lived in California and the Property Manager lived in Florida, and they had abused my account by taking my payment out of my account. I communicated this was not authorized or agreed upon and if they wouldn’t mind I like to exercise my independence. My daughter was disabled as well.
Well, moving in was a number of masked hidden electrical, plumbing and heating and air problems that caused me a huge scare as well as my daughter. Thereby, I work diligently on getting both owner and manager to fix the issue, but sadly to say it only spiraled out of control. How so, well for one I was inhaling black mold and my lungs and lymphatic system including my nervous system and my daughter health were all compromised. She had a rare environmental upper airway obstruction and disease she couldn’t be exposed to Severe cold Climate, and or Extreme Hot weather, bacteria, mold, insects that carried bacteria, herbicides, pesticides, contaminant toxicant, and or anything that would cause her to obstruct.. Well, it was a task in itself, somehow a tree root had grown underneath the piping and into the pipe line causing plumbing issues and water constantly ran over the flooring in the bedrooms, causing more mold. But no none was able to come and fix it, I was told the only thing they could do is send various people on certain times to inspect to do an estimation of cost. If the cost was over 75 dollars of work then they wouldn’t be able to do the repair if it was over 500 and up they refused to do the repair but suggested if I would replace the flooring then they will reimburse me they couldn’t contact the owner in sometime. They have sold the property while living in it. They continued to ignore the repairs so the housing placement continued to have a strain with them and it became a bad breach of management, yet I was the one forced out of the property and left on the streets and they were aloud to request the case be brought back at a later date. They never returned the deposit, instead they demanded a 5,000 dollars on my account. I was in the streets with my daughter and I have been in a hotel ever since. so from 2019 to present this has been my living. It was never about not paying rent, it was about unethical, unfair, discriminatory issue. There is more to the story in which I havent touched on and of course its there side too. They had people to harass us, peek in our windows and all sorts of weird tactics to get the property and to get funds. The police department has taken so many complaints, and have witness things as well. The Chief also had a person to watch our property and agreed strange things were going on… the Ordinance department had agreed so many things were out of place and suddenly there demand for them to immediately fix it or pay a 10,000 dollar fined disappeared . No one worked on my behalf and if so they worked with them, I never had due process, instead, I was threatened, coerced and forced into the Wintry Cold December 3, 2019- now how am I to learn to better protect myself.. Its a bit difficult when the services put in place only give one the runarounds and never has a permanent solution in protecting and preventing abuse of rights . Apparently, there is a HOLE in the BRIDGE