The Town & Country Inn in Chattanooga, as seen in this file photo.The neighbors gathered in room 202.
They needed a place out of the cold to talk, a place to compare notes.
Since power to some of their rooms at the Town & Country Inn had been switched off by a hotel manager earlier that morning, the small group had become frantic about the falling temperatures, expected to dip into the teens that night.
Santos Ortiz, once a dishwasher at the hotel’s restaurant, and Devin Johnson, a former hotel cook who shares two rooms with his mother, his girlfriend and his 2-year-old daughter, pace the floor.
The only woman in the group, Linda Stevens, who lives in room 206 and has paid rent with a portion of her disability check, sits on the bed and sobs.