A lifelong resident of Chattanooga, Latisha Evans, 35, has seen rents climb relentlessly since moving into her first place about 20 years ago: An apartment that she said cost her $250 a month.
Evans has rented a few different homes over the years -- one house cost her $400 a month and another $500 -- but she really noticed an uptick in prices in 2017. Before moving to East Ridge's Budgetel Inn, she said, she was spending about $900 a month on housing.
"I just think it's ridiculous how rent can keep going up and going up," she told the Chattanooga Times Free Press in a phone call Friday.
The Chattanooga Regional Homeless Coalition is now covering the cost of 18 hotel rooms for families displaced from the Budgetel Inn, a decisive drop from the more than 100 households the coalition was sheltering after the motel was abruptly shut down Nov. 16 by authorities who deemed it a crime-ridden public nuisance.
Evans and her four children were among those families and had stayed at the Budgetel Inn for about a month before she and other guests were told that morning they had four hours to leave. Through assistance from the city of Chattanooga, Evans recently found a house where she could stay on a Section 8 voucher, a feat that has been challenging to accomplish over the past couple months.
The Section 8 housing choice voucher program is the federal government's main program for helping very low-income families, older adults and disabled people to afford decent, safe and sanitary housing in the private market, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development's website.
Sam Wolfe, the director of the Chattanooga Office of Homelessness and Supportive Housing, said in a phone interview Thursday that many of the remaining families staying in hotel rooms either have a loved one with medical conditions or children.
"These are the people we're actively working (with) and trying to prioritize for housing," he said.
District Attorney Coty Wamp asked a judge in November to close down the Budgetel Inn, stating there had been a high volume of crime there over the past few years. A motion she filed said East Ridge police responded to 1,421 calls at the motel from Oct. 1, 2019, to Oct. 8, 2022, and that there were four known sex offenders living at the motel in close proximity to children. The Hamilton County Sheriff's Office later identified a fifth.
Wolfe's department has been identifying housing placements for families, and it has so far found permanent accommodations for 29 households, consisting of 48 adults and 34 children.
Most guests had been employed before the closure of the Budgetel Inn but lost jobs in the aftermath, Wolfe said. Those hotel rooms have served as a transitional situation as they save up money, find new jobs and become more self-sufficient, he said.
There are a few people in that category who are still paying for their own hotel room, Wolfe said, and the city is working with them to find permanent housing that would be more affordable long term.
Wolfe said his office has managed to quickly move people to public housing or to accommodations available through Section 8 vouchers. People displaced due to government action, Wolfe said, are bumped to the top of the wait list for housing.
A broad alliance of local organizations has been working to ensure people can move to more stable living conditions, he said.
"A lot of people have stepped up to provide assistance to this point, and we're grateful," Wolfe said. "I feel confident that we'll be able to continue to leverage these resources to meet that need."
December tends to be the office's slowest month of the year because of the holidays, Wolfe said, but last month the city's office of homelessness housed 98 people, an increase from seven housed in December the year prior.
"It has been a really herculean effort on my team's part to facilitate this and to get as many people housed as we can as fast as we can," Wolfe said, noting that all 18 of his staff members have been involved in the endeavor in some capacity over the past two months.
Mackenzie Kelly, the director of community engagement at the Chattanooga Regional Homeless Coalition, said the organization was maintaining a high of 132 hotel rooms following the closure of the Budgetel Inn, totaling more than 300 adults and children.
In mid-December, the organization approached the Chattanooga City Council and the Hamilton County Commission to request $50,000 from each to continue to fund hotel rooms for those families. The county's $50,000 allocation went into effect without County Mayor Weston Wamp's signature.
The coalition has also relied on about $100,000 in crowdsourced dollars it received through an emergency hotel fund, and the United Way also covered the first two weeks of everyone's stay, Kelly said.
"We're spending it as fast as it's coming in," Kelly said. "These hotel rooms are not cheap, but we have had some wonderful support from the community."
Nikki Riemen, director of marketing and communications with the United Way of Greater Chattanooga, said in an email the organization was part of a coordinated response that helped families affected by the Budgetel's closure in November.
In partnership with the Chattanooga Regional Homeless Coalition and other organizations, Riemen said, the United Way helped 107 adults and 64 children find shelter right before Thanksgiving by providing $100,000. The week of the motel's closing, the organization's 211 crisis hotline also saw a 61% spike in calls.
Invoices are still coming in from hotels, Kelly said Friday, so it's difficult to ascertain exactly how much funding remains, but the coalition has exhausted just about every dime.
"We're working really closely with the Community Foundation, the United Way and some other community partners to try to ensure we can see these folks through to permanent housing solutions," she said. "The rooms we have left are the most vulnerable folks."
Although the number fluctuates, Kelly said, the weekly cost of maintaining those hotel rooms was about $41,000 about two weeks ago, but since then, the number of hotel rooms has been cut in half. Wolfe estimated the weekly cost of the 18 hotel rooms is now approximately $10,000.
Overall, Kelly said, the situation emphasizes the high barrier of entry that can exist for people looking for a place to rent in Hamilton County. Families staying at an extended stay hotel may have $1,200 to cover the cost of a room for a month, which can severely deplete their recurring income, but getting into a new place could run upwards of $5,000 taking into account first and last months' rent, a security deposit and pets.
"Even the more affordable places in our community right now are not affordable to people who are living paycheck to paycheck," she said.
Contact David Floyd at dfloyd@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6249.