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| In this Tuesday, April 8, 2014 photo, Theresa Muller prepares to move out of her motel room she shares with her boyfriend, father and three children in Kissimmee, Fla. Muller and her family have been homeless but plan to move to a home in a neighboring county. |
KISSIMMEE, Fla.
(AP) -- When they moved from Georgia to the theme park playground of
central Florida four years ago, Anthony and Candice Johnson found work
at a barbecue restaurant and a 7-Eleven. Their combined salaries
nevertheless fell short of what they needed to rent an apartment, so the
couple and their two children have instead been hopping among cheap
motel rooms along U.S. 192.
"What's hard for
us isn't paying the bills," Candice Johnson, 24, said. "It's just trying
to get our feet in the door" with the combined expense of application
fees, security deposits and first month's rent needed for a place of
their own.
The Johnsons are among a growing
number of families living in hotels in this Florida tourist corridor
because they can't afford anything else and because their county has no
shelters for the estimated 1,216 homeless households with children.
The
problem has created a backlash among the mostly mom-and-pop businesses,
with some owners suing the county sheriff to force his deputies to
evict guests who haven't paid or who have turned their rooms into
semipermanent residences. It also shines a light on the gap among those
who work and live in this county that sits in the shadow of Walt Disney
World, and the big-spending tourists who flock here.
On
any given day, tourists pay nearly $100 per person to get into
Orlando's theme parks. There, they may be waited on by homeless parents.
From their hotels, they jog past bus stops where homeless children wait
to head to school. They buy coffee at Starbucks next to the motels that
have become families' homes.
Starting minimum
pay at Walt Disney World - the area's largest employer, just a few
miles from the motels - is $8.03 an hour, though that could increase to
$10 under a contract being negotiated with the resort's largest union
group.
"Tourists that come here ... I don't
think they have a clue," said James Ortiz, 31, a fast-food worker who
recently moved out of a motel room and into an RV park with his parents
and 5-year-old son.
Homeless advocates blame
the housing problem on the low-paying wages of the service economy and
the rents in Osceola County, with 300,000 people. While inexpensive
compared with larger cities, Osceola rents often exceed what a worker
earning near minimum wage can afford, said Catherine Jackson, a
consultant who recently wrote a report for the county about the
homeless.
Median earnings for workers in
Osceola County are $24,128 a year, according to U.S. Census figures, and
median rent is $800 a month. Motel rooms can go for just $39 a night.
"The
fact that we're the happiest place on Earth and No. 1 travel
destination is good news, but this service-based economy is actually
creating a dynamic of homelessness," Jackson said.
Many
of the county's homeless moved here to find jobs in the tourism
industry, so they lack the social networks of family or churches,
Jackson said.
"Paying weekly is all we can do
to survive," Ortiz, 31, said. "I can't find a house that is suitable in a
decent neighborhood for me and my child to be able to pay rent, pay the
utilities, pay car insurance, pay gas and buy food."
For
two years, Theresa Muller has lived in motel room after motel room with
her three young children, her father and her boyfriend. The owner of
HomeSuiteHome has wanted her out for months.
Dianna
Chane says Muller's family is violating the hotel's policy of only four
people per room, and clothes, furniture, toys, garbage and boxes are
piled chest-high.
Chane is among those suing
Osceola County Sheriff Bob Hansell to force his deputies to evict such
guests. Under Florida's lodging law, it's a second-degree misdemeanor to
stay in a room after being asked to leave.
Yet each time Chane has
asked the sheriff's office to intervene, she says deputies have refused
even though they follow the law for brand-name hotels. Chane says the
office calls the issue a landlord-tenant dispute that should be handled
in civil court.
"I can't afford it," said Chane, who figures she has swallowed more than $200,000 in unpaid rooms since 2012.
A
sheriff's spokeswoman and an attorney for the sheriff said they
wouldn't comment on pending litigation. In court papers, an attorney for
the sheriff said there is a presumption that occupants are not
transient if they say the hotel room is their sole residence.
"Hotel
owners simply cannot engage long-term guests ... then turn on a dime
when they stop paying and pretend they are tourists," the sheriff's
attorney said in a court filing.
Muller said
she's unemployed but hopeful about a dollar-store retail job. Until
then, her father's disability payments help the family try to get by.
She said she found a house she can afford in a neighboring county and
was in the process of moving out of Chane's motel.
"It's not a place for kids," Muller said.
