November 13, 2025
As an alternative of putting them in a shelter, the Broome County Division of Social Providers cycled them by 4 roadside resorts over three months, the place they largely needed to fend for themselves.
Jasmine Stradford sat on her porch close to Binghamton, New York, with toys, furnishings, rubbish luggage filled with clothes, and different possessions piled up round her. She and her companion had been being evicted after falling behind on lease and contemplated which possibility may assist her household: shelters, resorts, or the road.
So final June, they and their youngsters—then ages three, 12, and 15—turned to New York’s emergency shelter system for assist. It was constructed to offer homeless residents not solely beds, but in addition meals, assist discovering everlasting housing, and typically youngster care so mother and father can discover work, attend faculty, or search for flats.
Stradford and her household acquired virtually none of that. As an alternative of putting them in a shelter, the Broome County Division of Social Providers cycled them by 4 roadside resorts over three months, the place they largely needed to fend for themselves.
“I keep in mind gazing my youngsters, pondering that I’d failed them,” Stradford stated. “Then I keep in mind going to DSS and being fully dehumanized.”
Stradford’s household was a part of a rising development: Previously few years, resorts have quietly turn out to be the state’s predominant response to homelessness exterior New York Metropolis, The Financial Hardship Reporting Mission, New York Focus, and ProPublica discovered that the state’s social providers companies positioned slightly below half the 34,000 people and households receiving emergency shelter exterior town in fiscal yr 2024 in resorts—up from 29% in 2018. The change was most pronounced in Broome County, the place lodge instances greater than quintupled.
Statewide spending on resorts greater than tripled over that interval to $110 million, in line with an evaluation of state momentary housing information by the information organizations. In complete, resorts exterior New York Metropolis had been paid about $420 million to shelter unhoused folks from April 2017 to September 2024.
It’s a makeshift association that gives folks with a roof over their head however little else. State rules exempt resorts from offering the identical providers that households are alleged to obtain within the shelter system.
The resorts are “much less supportive, much less conducive for good well being outcomes, good schooling outcomes,” stated Adam Bosch, CEO of Hudson Valley Sample for Progress, a coverage analysis nonprofit. “If our final purpose is to get folks shifting again towards independence, sticking them in a lodge on a hillside away from providers, away from faculties, away from transportation networks shouldn’t be an awesome technique.”
Homelessness in New York Metropolis acquired intense media protection because the migrant disaster grew to become fodder within the presidential election. However far much less consideration has been paid to the homeless inhabitants all through the remainder of New York, which far surpasses most different states by itself.
A number of of the migrants had been relocated to resorts exterior town. As an alternative, the spike in lodge housing stems from a mix of hovering lease, dozens of shelter closures, and what housing advocates and trade representatives stated was a botched response to the tip of the state’s pandemic-related eviction moratorium in 2022. After the moratorium ended, landlords started evicting tenants at charges exceeding earlier years. With fewer shelters and extra folks in want, the variety of people and households positioned in resorts shot up.
Barbara Guinn, the commissioner of the state Workplace of Short-term and Incapacity Help, stated in an interview that her company hadn’t studied the expansion in lodge use for emergency shelter. The development has been scarcely talked about at legislative hearings in Albany.
However OTDA, which supervises the county social providers places of work, has lengthy recognized in regards to the issues the resorts current. In early 2020, state auditors warned the company that it wasn’t adequately overseeing shelters, together with resorts used as momentary housing. OTDA acknowledged that resorts current challenges as a result of they don’t have on-site help providers or the identical degree of supervision as shelters.
Guidelines clarifying the requirement that momentary housing recipients in resorts obtain shelter-like providers have been on OTDA’s regulatory agenda for at the least 4 years. However the company, and lawmakers who oversee it, stood by as lodge housing elevated. Guinn stated she couldn’t “present perception” on why the company by no means formally proposed the foundations, however she dedicated to advancing them this yr. The Broome County Division of Social Providers didn’t make its commissioner, Nancy Williams, accessible for an interview and didn’t reply to an in depth checklist of questions.
Reporting throughout the state, the information organizations discovered folks dwelling for months and typically years in resorts, doing what they will to get by. Households share beds whereas their belongings fill the corners of their rooms. With out kitchens and barred from utilizing most home equipment, they trek down shoulderless highways to grocery shops or scour meals pantries for something they will cook dinner in a microwave. They squish cockroaches skittering in dressers. And resorts typically drive them to maneuver out each few weeks, conserving stability out of attain.
The 4 resorts that Stradford’s household was positioned in final summer time collectively made about $10,000, sheltering it over three months — greater than what the household owed in again lease. That works out to greater than twice the month-to-month truthful market lease for a four-bedroom condo in Binghamton on the time.
This isn’t uncommon. County social providers places of work usually pay the lodge’s charges which are value many occasions truthful market lease for everlasting housing of their areas, in line with the evaluation of OTDA’s housing cost information. One motel in Rome, exterior Utica, that was the scene of a taking pictures final fall charged the county $250 an evening for a room at occasions, in line with invoices submitted to the county’s Division of Social Providers.
Over three months, Stradford’s household struggled to take care of some semblance of its previous life whereas bouncing from lodge to lodge. The household would lose numerous possessions. The youngsters’ educations can be disrupted, as the college bus didn’t sustain with their strikes. Their experiences would present the significance of the providers they weren’t receiving and what occurs to New York’s homeless households once they can’t entry them.
“It’s Like Malpractice”
Stradford and her companion, Tiberious Moses, had been evicted after she missed work at a youngsters’s group dwelling whereas recovering from surgical procedure, and Moses struggled to help the household with momentary jobs. At first, Stradford was relieved when the Division of Social Providers knowledgeable her that it will place them in a lodge as a substitute of a shelter.
“Going to the lodge, I initially thought, ‘OK, this offers slightly bit extra leeway, slightly bit extra consolation, hospitality, all of that,’ solely to seek out out that it’s not that in any respect,” she stated. “If you’re a DSS recipient, you’re nothing. You’re the backside of the pit.”
Stradford’s household—two adults, three youngsters, and 4 canines—was packed right into a room with two beds at an Econo Lodge sandwiched between a fuel station and one other finances lodge. Stradford stated she discovered cockroaches and had hassle getting the lodge to wash their room. She stated she typically noticed drug use on the lodge and felt unsafe. Legislation enforcement and emergency providers had been referred to as to the lodge 116 occasions within the first half of that yr, dispatch logs present.
Regardless of these circumstances, the Econo Lodge acquired more cash to accommodate momentary help recipients than some other recognized lodge exterior New York Metropolis, in line with the OTDA funds information for the 2024 fiscal yr. The lodge, now referred to as Hillside Inn & Suites, served greater than 900 people and households positioned by the Division of Social Providers for at the least 30,000 complete nights, incomes over $2.3 million.
“We’re compelled to lease lodge rooms throughout the state, and the operators of those locations perceive that,” stated state Sen. Roxanne Persaud, chair of the chamber’s Social Providers Committee. “The municipalities’ backs are in opposition to the wall. And they also should place the unhoused individual or individuals someplace. And in order that’s why you see the price is skyrocketing, as a result of folks perceive that it’s a simple option to make cash off the federal government.”
OTDA’s rules say resorts ought to be thought-about shelters and supply providers if they’re used “primarily” as momentary housing for homeless welfare recipients. Not less than 16 resorts seem to accommodate largely welfare recipients, the evaluation confirmed.
OTDA spokesperson Anthony Farmer stated the company interprets “primarily” to imply resorts that “home recipients solely, or virtually solely, all year long.” He stated that resorts aren’t required to ship providers however that county social providers companies “are chargeable for some degree of service provision.” The state, nonetheless, doesn’t usually acquire data on how counties present providers. Guinn stated OTDA plans to create a proper course of for counties to submit it underneath new rules.
The Econo Lodge’s contract with Broome County doesn’t name for the providers provided by shelters, like meals and help discovering housing. It requires the lodge to offer little greater than a room with housekeeping, linens, and toiletries. The lodge’s CEO, Paresh Patel, declined to remark.
In distinction, conventional shelters typically put a major quantity of their funding towards social providers. Shelter budgets obtained from OTDA present that they steadily retain at the least part-time workers to arrange meals and assist folks discover jobs and housing. Native social providers places of work attempt to offset the dearth of on-site providers by hiring caseworkers, however have struggled to retain them.
As an alternative, lodge residents like Stradford’s household are caught in an internet of conflicts between the best way these providers are supplied, the strings hooked up to advantages, and the foundations and limitations of dwelling in resorts. Social providers departments may present them with meals stamps to purchase groceries, however lodge residents often don’t have kitchens and are sometimes not allowed to have home equipment like sizzling plates. To maintain their lodging, they’re typically required to hunt housing and to work or search for jobs, however they typically don’t obtain youngster care. They need to usually meet with caseworkers at social providers places of work, however should depend on spotty public transportation.
“To me, it’s like malpractice as a homeless providers supplier to put folks with out help providers” in resorts, stated Deborah Padgett, a professor of social work at New York College. “It’s good within the sense that they get extra privateness, however for them to get a life and never be depending on the federal government, they should be near providers and never be punished for making errors.”
Guinn stated that her company would favor counties use regulated shelters in housing emergencies, however that there aren’t sufficient beds to accommodate everybody. Social providers places of work should depend on resorts when shelters don’t have area or don’t exist in a selected county, Farmer stated in an electronic mail.
After 26 nights, Broome County relocated Stradford’s household to the High quality Inn & Suites in Vestal, a Binghamton suburb down the Susquehanna River that’s dwelling to Binghamton College. Stradford’s automotive had been repossessed, in order that they stuffed a suitcase and the youngsters’ ebook luggage with as many garments as they may and hopped on the bus.
On the High quality Inn, the household struggled to eat. They’d utilized for meals stamps, however Stradford stated she couldn’t get wage data from her former employer proving she was eligible. As an alternative, the county supplied them a restaurant allowance value about $15 a day to cowl all 5 of them. To get by, they took the bus to meals pantries like Catholic Charities, which had began creating “lodge luggage” full of canned meals, oatmeal, crackers, macaroni, and cheese and snacks for the youngsters—something that could possibly be eaten chilly or ready with a microwave.
Whereas many shelters present meals on web site, contracts between the resorts and Broome County forbid emergency housing recipients from consuming the resorts’ meals. Stradford stated her household was threatened with removing from the High quality Inn after her 12-year-old daughter, Taylor, tried to eat the continental breakfast.
“After we first began taking households on, we did permit breakfast, and sadly, there was an excessive amount of being carried away, so we selected to vary that,” the lodge’s common supervisor, Bernadine Morris, stated. The High quality Inn has since closed and couldn’t be reached for follow-up questions.
Individuals can get kicked out of resorts and lose their housing help for repeatedly violating resorts’ insurance policies, together with by utilizing their very own cooking home equipment. One girl who beforehand lived on the Motel 6 in Binghamton stated she prevented sanctions by throwing an extension wire from the window of her second-story room to make use of a stress cooker on the sidewalk.
Stradford’s nonstop juggling act left her on edge. She was grieving her mom’s dying, feeding 5 folks and 4 canines, apartment-hunting, and hustling to culinary courses and social providers appointments. She stated her youngsters began feeling the stress too: Her three-year-old, Samir, was wetting the mattress steadily, and the older youngsters missed courses for his or her summer time programs.
The household started butting heads with High quality Inn managers, who accused them of being disruptive and terminated their keep, in line with Stradford’s social providers case file.
“I’m not completely shocked that they run into issues with the lodge supervisors and the workers simply because they’re looking for some option to get their wants attended to, and it’s probably not truthful to anticipate the lodge to do what these individuals are not educated to do,” Padgett stated.
Shelters are required to have sufficient certified workers to fulfill residents’ wants. The workers members typically have at the least some coaching in find out how to deal with populations with complicated wants, stated Elizabeth Bowen, an affiliate professor on the College at Buffalo College of Social Work.
After Stradford and her household misplaced their room on the High quality Inn, the county sanctioned them and declined to seek out them a brand new place to remain. Moses, who had simply gotten a job at Dave & Buster’s, paid out of his personal pocket for a room on the Purple Roof Inn in Johnson Metropolis. Once they arrived, the lady on the entrance desk noticed their belongings and canines and instructed them the motel wouldn’t honor the reservation. They’d used what little cash was left on Uber and the room deposit. The motel didn’t return requests for remark.
Because it rained, Stradford received a maintain of the Division of Social Providers and pleaded their case. The county determined to proceed housing her household till her sanction could possibly be appealed. It booked them on the Knights Inn, one other 10 minutes down the street in a city referred to as Endwell.
“I Acquired Into Safety Mode”
Stradford’s household grew to become expert at sleeping on a single mattress on the Knights Inn. Stradford, Moses, Samir, and 15-year-old De’Vante would sleep aspect by aspect whereas Taylor slept horizontally at their ft.
The remainder of the ability was in chaos, Stradford stated. She noticed hypodermic needles and different drug paraphernalia mendacity within the grass and beneath the stairwell, and folks slumped over whereas standing beside the dumpster. Over about six years that the county used it for momentary housing, legislation enforcement and emergency providers had been summoned to the motel for 789 incidents, together with assaults, overdoses, robberies, home disputes, and psychological well being crises.
The Knights Inn had a litany of points that prevented it from passing Broome County Social Providers’ inspections from 2018 to 2021. In line with inspection studies, the rooms had been dimly lit because of lacking gentle bulbs and damaged lamps. The partitions had been stained and punched by, and the wallpaper peeled off. Some rooms’ doorways didn’t lock. Home windows didn’t work both or had been damaged. Carpets had been torn, and inspectors discovered cockroaches in dressers.
Well being and questions of safety plague resorts used as emergency shelters throughout the state. A 2020 state comptroller audit discovered that 60% of the resorts they reviewed exterior New York Metropolis had been in “unsatisfactory” situation—about the identical as the share of shelters.
One girl, who was dwelling together with her youngsters in a motel south of Albany, confirmed paint flaking off their partitions and mattresses lined in black mildew. Two different mother and father positioned within the motel stated they felt that if the Division of Social Providers caught them in personal housing that resembled their dwelling circumstances, their child could possibly be taken away by Little one Protecting Providers.
OTDA requires social providers companies to examine resorts housing households each six months. However an evaluation of OTDA compliance information confirmed that social providers districts typically fail to maintain up with lodge inspections: About 40% of the 351 resorts used to accommodate homeless folks exterior New York Metropolis had been old-fashioned on their social providers inspections as of mid-October, or didn’t have an inspection date listed.
Farmer, the OTDA spokesperson, stated that the majority resorts had been inspected inside a yr and that some others had stopped housing folks.
Even when social providers companies do inspections, data present they generally fail to take motion. Motels need to right issues inside 30 days, until it’s a security downside. In the event that they don’t, counties are alleged to cease putting folks there, in line with a directive from OTDA.
Information present that the Knights Inn fastened a few of the points because it went, however continued to get written up in each inspection for 2 and a half years. Regardless of this, Broome County positioned a whole lot of social providers instances there, incomes the motel over $750,000.
A Knights Inn supervisor, Aizaz Siddiqui, stated that the motel moved folks out of rooms that wanted essentially the most work till they had been renovated.
In January 2021, the county stated it will cease putting folks on the Knights Inn till the violations had been corrected. The motel acquired a clear inspection in July 2022. However Stradford stated the Knights Inn wouldn’t give them bathroom paper or recent sheets, that are required in shelters. A bedsheet was used as a curtain for his or her rear window.
The household stayed for 3 weeks, however tensions with administration boiled over when the household didn’t eliminate their canines by the deadline set by the motel. Finally, the Knights Inn instructed them to go away. After giving them a couple of further days to seek out different lodging, Siddiqui referred to as the police to take away them.
Siddiqui stated the households positioned on the inn by the Division of Social Providers deserve sympathy, however he nonetheless has to take care of order. “It’s a troublesome scenario to be in, and we attempt to work with them as a lot as we are able to,” he stated. “However once more, we do have to satisfy our insurance policies, and we have now to face by them.” The motel declined to reply to extra questions in regards to the circumstances.
Stradford’s household didn’t have wherever else to go. Because the State Police arrived, she planted herself on a pink cooler in entrance of their room and refused to go away till the county discovered them someplace to remain.
Some neighborhood activists she met by native charity work confirmed as much as help her and livestreamed the incident on Fb.
After a three-hour standoff, administration relented and allowed the household to remain two extra nights. One of many activists arrived with a U-Haul and drove their stuff to the Motel 6, a 15-minute drive again up the river, previous the Econo Lodge on the outskirts of Binghamton.
Issues had been initially calm on the Motel 6. However about three weeks into their keep, the Motel 6 complained to the county that Stradford had left the kids alone, which they had been instructed violated the motel’s visitor coverage. Stradford stated she was doing charity work on the time, however complained that she couldn’t attend faculty or meet the state’s necessities to search for housing if she needed to continuously supervise her youngsters.
The motel gave the household the weekend to go away. Once they missed their checkout time, the Sheriff’s Workplace got here to take away them.
Moses referred to as Stradford, who was at college, to inform her what was taking place. She headed to the Division of Social Providers to plead their case.
“I received into safety mode,” Stradford stated. “I wasn’t going to go away there and simply put myself in a severely homeless scenario. So I instructed them I wasn’t leaving till I knew that we had a safe spot to go to.”
However her makes an attempt failed. The company stated it will now not assist her household because of the complaints. The clerk used a particular device to unlock the room for the deputies.
Neighborhood members as soon as once more confirmed as much as livestream the encounter and stress the county. The Sheriff’s Workplace helped the household discover a motel, the place it stayed for 2 extra nights.
In the long run, it wasn’t New York’s social providers system that discovered steady housing for Stradford’s household; it was a neighborhood landlord who heard in regards to the case and provided an condo at a charge the household may afford on Moses’ wages and momentary help from the county.
Stradford’s household was positioned in resorts for 89 days, in regards to the common for a social providers case. Many keep far longer. Greater than 1,500 people and households spent six months or extra in resorts, in line with cost information from the 2024 fiscal yr.
“A few of us actually get into a tough time, and we actually do want the assistance. We don’t simply depend on the system,” Stradford stated. “I pay my hard-earned tax {dollars}. I labored a number of jobs. I’m the one that attempted to maintain afloat and stuff like that. However issues occur in life.”
Between their six strikes, the household misplaced most of its possessions: furnishings, Social Safety playing cards, beginning certificates, tax paperwork, household pictures, laptops, coats, a portray from somebody Jasmine was caring for, Samir’s toy field, Taylor’s artwork tasks, and a blanket lined in motivational quotes that Stradford’s mother had given her earlier than she handed. They’d to surrender two of their canines.
Once they arrived at their new dwelling, they’d solely a few suitcases and rubbish luggage full of garments.
How lodge stays had been measured
To trace momentary housing recipients positioned in resorts, New York Focus and ProPublica used information obtained from the New York Workplace of Short-term and Incapacity Help by an open data request. The info incorporates 1.1 million funds issued from April 2017 to September 2024 for emergency shelter stays exterior New York Metropolis. OTDA repeatedly delayed releasing the information for 10 months, however lastly did so after ProPublica’s attorneys received concerned within the appeals course of.
The info categorized funds by kind of shelter, together with household shelters, transitional housing, and resorts. It additionally included an “emergency shelter” class for momentary housing help supplied earlier than a case is absolutely permitted, which might circulation to each resorts and shelters.
This evaluation consists of solely funds explicitly categorized as lodge funds. Excluded had been some funds that had been categorized as lodge funds however the place the recipients seemed to be nonprofits that operated homeless shelters.
The info additionally included distinctive IDs for every help case that acquired shelter, permitting the reporters to find out how many individuals stayed in resorts and for about how lengthy. Every case represents both a person or a household.
To search out resorts that housed largely welfare recipients, New York Focus and ProPublica relied on every lodge’s complete variety of rooms reported to the New York State Division of Well being and checked whether or not shelter funds lined at the least half of the lodge’s complete capability from April 1, 2023, to March 31, 2024.
The info listed the beginning and finish dates for every cost, however it was not at all times clear whether or not the keep was inclusive or unique of the ultimate date. In consequence, the ultimate night time was excluded when counting up dates to create essentially the most conservative estimates potential, until the cost lined a single night time. When evaluating the funds in opposition to truthful market lease, they included the ultimate night time, which might lower the day by day charge.
Motels used to accommodate homeless households exterior New York Metropolis have to be inspected by counties as soon as each six months. After that, the district has 30 days to submit the report back to OTDA for evaluation.
OTDA supplied a database of inspections for resorts as of Oct. 15, 2024. To find out whether or not a lodge was overdue on inspection, the reporters checked whether or not the newest inspection was accomplished and submitted to OTDA within the seven months main as much as that date. In some instances, the inspection could have been performed however was not submitted to the state on time.
This story was produced by The Financial Hardship Reporting Mission, ProPublica and New York Focus, and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.
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