For many motel dwellers, eviction ban provides no relief

ATLANTA (AP) — For more than five years, home for Armetrius Neason has been a hotel outside Atlanta. He's adorned the walls with dozens of pictures of Black celebrities and icons. It's the address on his driver's license and where he receives mail.

But last year as the COVID-19 pandemic raged, the hotel accused him of owing $1,800 in back rent and threatened to lock him out, the 58-year-old said.

“I was packing my clothes. I really had nowhere to go," he recalled during a phone interview.

Efficiency Lodge said Neason — despite his lengthy stay — was a guest it could kick off the property without filing an eviction case in court.

“If you go to a Holiday Inn and you don’t pay your room rate, the next day your key won’t work,” said Roy Barnes, a former Georgia governor and attorney for the lodge, which is co-owned by his brother, Ray Barnes. “It's the same law.”

Neason's struggles reflect the heightened risk of homelessness faced by motel and hotel dwellers during the pandemic, housing attorneys say. Many states do not clearly define when hotel and motel guests become tenants — a designation held by traditional leaseholders that gives them the right to contest an eviction attempt before a judge. Hotel guests, in contrast, can be removed summarily.

The legal gap made motel living riskier than typical home renting even before the pandemic. Now it's even less stable, the attorneys say. Job losses during the pandemic have made it harder for millions of Americans to make rent. But hotel guests are excluded from a federal moratorium on evictions for people facing financial hardship during the coronavirus outbreak.

Hotel and motel residents in California, Colorado, Florida, Louisiana, New Jersey and Virginia have reported being expelled or threatened with...