An East Ridge motel closed by a court order last year is poised to reopen one of its four buildings soon, attorneys said Thursday.
The Budgetel Inn was home to more than 350 long-term guests before the order from Hamilton County District Attorney Coty Wamp closed the motel in November with less than a day’s notice, Mackenzie Kelly, deputy director of the Chattanooga Regional Homeless Coalition, told county commissioners during a Wednesday meeting.
Wamp cited high levels of reported crime at the motel. Court filings highlighted calls to police that were related to drug use, overdoses, assaults and disorderly conduct.
(READ MORE: Hamilton County judge: ‘The roadmap to reopen the Budgetel is very clear right now’)
The county’s case against the motel means Budgetel owner Amish Patel has to update the court on renovations and improvements being made to the property.
Now, nearly six months after the motel was shuttered, its first building should be ready to reopen within the next month, Patel’s attorney, Christopher Clem, said during a status conference Thursday.
Patel said following Thursday’s hearing that he expects the process to be quicker for the other three buildings.
Building 1 of the Budgetel, which sits on North Mack Smith Road next to the lobby, has passed fire and health safety inspections, Clem said in a court hearing Thursday. The building has around 60 rooms, attorneys said.
Now, the motel is waiting on an occupancy certificate from East Ridge. Attorneys said Thursday the city will issue that certificate once the court finds the building is ready and lifts its temporary injunction on the motel’s operation.
Representatives from the county and motel plan to do a walk-through of Building 1 sometime next week, Clem said, and will notify the court of any issues. If there are none, the court may lift the injunction in a hearing set for June 22 or sometime before that if attorneys request, Hamilton County Judge Boyd Patterson said Thursday.
In December, Patterson participated in a walk-through of the property, about three weeks after long-term guests were made to move out. At that point, rooms had not been cleaned — the judge and others on the visit saw feces smeared in one room and belongings left behind in others.
Clem said in some rooms, televisions and refrigerators had been stolen while residents were moving out.
“Hundreds of thousands of dollars of damage was done,” Clem said in an interview Thursday. “We’ve easily lost well over a million dollars because of how this was handled … we probably spent several hundreds of thousands just on cleaning.”
After Thursday’s hearing, Clem said he’d like to see state law change to require advance notice to be given to residents of a building marked for closure.
The motel has added cameras on the outside of buildings, fixed electrical problems and cleaned rooms, Clem said.
When the Budgetel reopens, it will be required to keep a list of people who pay for their rooms in cash with copies of identification for each person, Clem said. That list will be available to East Ridge police if they need to see records of who lives there, he said.
The motel had basically become an apartment complex for people who had trouble getting approved for a traditional lease, guests said. But guests previously told the Chattanooga Times Free Press they often paid more for a room at the Budgetel than market rate for a studio or one-bedroom apartment — between $1,000 and $1,400 a month.
(READ MORE: ‘I have no idea what to do’: East Ridge motel residents react to possible closure)
Many of the Budgetel’s guests, which included 128 children by the homeless coalition’s count, were placed in other hotel rooms using money from the coalition and public fundraising. Money from the state, county, city of Chattanooga, United Way and Community Foundation of Greater Chattanooga then helped keep people in rooms for several months as the coalition worked to place residents in permanent housing, the coalition said.
While the first few court hearings about the Budgetel were packed with former guests, the only people attending Thursday’s status update were members of the media.
About half of the 141 households living at the Budgetel at the time it was closed have been placed in permanent housing, coalition officials said Wednesday while updating Hamilton County commissioners on the $50,000 contribution the commission made to the Budgetel response.
Of the other half, 56 households were marked as self-resolved, meaning they found some form of housing and are paying their own way. There is no record of the remaining 17 households from the Budgetel seeking homelessness services since being displaced, Kelly said Wednesday, which likely means they found someplace to live.
But being self-resolved doesn’t mean that the search for housing is over. Michele Pantages, a former Budgetel guest who lives with her grandson, said she has been living at a motel on Brainerd Road since the coalition stopped paying for her room in February. She’s paying for the two-bedroom weekly, which comes out to more than $1,300 a month, and is struggling to find a permanent apartment without access to a car.
“It’s rough,” Pantages said by phone Thursday. “I get a small retirement check, but it’s very hard and stressful. The whole situation has really taken a toll on everybody.”
Contact Ellen Gerst at egerst@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6319.
Staff Photo by Robin Rudd / Mike Smith with the Chattanooga Regional Homeless Coalition, right, speaks to the County Commission on Dec. 14 about the needs of the former guests of the Budgetel. The coalition updated the commission on the rehousing process this week, after commissioners approved $50,000 to fund hotel rooms for displaced residents at the December meeting.