Julia Miller, her fiancé, and her seven children have called two rooms in the Motel 6 near the Rochester airport home for about two months.
That was until last week, when she received notice that her emergency housing placement at the motel was ending. She has to be out by Aug. 7.
She and her family were not alone. All 40 families that needed housing and that Monroe County had placed at the motel got similar notices from the county informing them that they could no longer stay there.
The reasoning was not immediately clear.
Some residents and advocates for the homeless said they were under the impression that the owner had opted out of accepting people from the county's emergency housing program.
A county spokesperson said the county had longstanding concerns about sanitary conditions at the hotel and was no longer placing people there.
The owner, Bisma Khan, however, said she only needed to temporarily stop accepting people to complete renovations and that she was never informed of any concerns over cleanliness.
"It was never meant to displace people, it was actually meant to make things better," Khan said. "...If this was a sanitary issue, we would have been shut down a long time ago."
On Monday, cars in the motel lot were packed with belongings as their owners embarked on finding a new place to live.
Miller, who ended up at the motel after being evicted from a home on Huntington Park, braced for the impact of being uprooted again.
“I’m taking it one day at a time,” Miller said. “I’m kind of just taking fate for what it is, and I don’t know what my fate is on the seventh.”
The Motel 6 was sold by its previous owners, Rochester-based Maruti Hotels Inc. to Albany’s Khan Hospitality LLC in February. Khan received approval by the Gates Town Board to operate the Motel 6 in March.
Gates town councilmembers had expressed concern with the motel being an emergency housing shelter, according to minutes from a recent board meeting. One, Councilmember Lee Cordero, mentioned worrying that pedophiles were being placed in the motel, without citing any specific occurrences.
The board added two stipulations to its agreement with the new owner: No guest could stay more than 30 days, and Khan would have to notify the town about any placements requested by the county.
Advocates for the homeless had mixed reactions to the news. On one hand, they lamented that so many families would be pushed out of their residence without a clear alternative. On the other, they cast conditions at the hotel as deplorable.
In Miller’s room, the air conditioning unit was running, but the temperature gauge read 90 degrees. Insects crawled along the desk at the front of the room. The ceiling showed signs of water damage.
“This is just my opinion, getting out of Motel 6 is not an issue for me,” Andy Carey, a social worker with MC Collaborative, said Monday at a meeting of local representatives and housing advocates. “I wish that would’ve happened years ago. It’s bad, and it’s the only place that was taking anybody.”
By the afternoon, 12 families that had resided at the motel were still looking for new shelter. Gary Walker, a spokesperson for the county, said in a statement that they would be placed in “safe and appropriate housing” by Friday.
His statement also read that the county had “ongoing concerns with the sanitary conditions at Motel 6.” It was not clear, however, whether the county had ever relayed those concerns to the people it was placing in the motel.
Kim Smith, a member of the Rochester City Council and organizer with social justice group VOCAL-NY, said the situation at the motel signaled a lack of effort on the county’s behalf to assist people in unstable housing situations.
“Because we have done very little, legislatively or economically in the budget to address these housing issues, they continue to escalate,” Smith said.
County Legislator Rachel Barnhart echoed that sentiment. She said she believes the county has surplus funds that could be used to find alternatives to the motel for people in need of housing.
“What’s shocking about this development is that we clearly do not have enough rooms available to place people in crisis,” Barnhart said. “One hotel owner saying, ‘We can’t house these people anymore,’ has led to a crisis, and I would like to know how do we get ourselves in that position.”
Barnhart, Smith, and the group of advocates said they are planning to help support people displaced from the Motel 6 in coming days.
Whether Miller’s family, whose move-out date looms, will be among the tenants that the county will place elsewhere by the end of the week is uncertain.
Her notice to leave came with another note informing her that the public assistance she receives from the county was being suspended due to her “endangering the health and safety of other residents” of the motel. The sanction bars her from receiving emergency housing for 30 days.
What caused the county to conclude that Miller was a danger to Motel 6 residents was not outlined in the non-renewal letter. Miller said she had no insight on the matter.
Miller recounted how she relocated to Rochester from Orlando, Florida, in 2008 to be near her grandparents in Orleans County. They have since died, as have her parents, she said. Her options to stay with friends and family are minimal, she said.
Her biggest fear now, she said, is losing what family she has left.
“My biggest fear is having myself up against the wall and losing my kids,” Miller said. “That’s my biggest fear. Yeah, that’s the biggest thing.”
Editor's note 7.31.23: This story has been updated from a previous version to add input from Motel 6 owner Bisma Khan.
