Parental Strategies for Protecting Their Children in Extended Stay Hotels

Terri Lewinson, PhD, LMSW

Georgia State University

My Extended Stay Research

- Use photography to understand residents’ descriptions of their extended-stay hotel environment. Specifically, how do residents:

Describe hotels as homes? Perceive hotel environments’ influence

on wellbeing? Cope with hotel-housing concerns? Experience social service barriers?

Problem

Virtually hidden population of homeless families in extended stay hotels

Families find hotels to be both a refuge and prison

Hotel conditions provide benefits and challenges

Parental Coping Strategies:

Shielding Their Emotions Distracting Their Children Maintaining Their Standards Keeping Their Guards Up

Parental Coping Strategies:

Shielding Their Emotions

“I want to cry out but…I'll look at her and I won't let her see me… [But] that just bothers me to no end.” – Bobby

Parental Coping Strategies:

Distracting Their Children

Providing toys/ video games

Playing family games

Cooking/baking to preserve traditions

Allowing extended visits away

Parental Coping Strategies:

Maintaining Their Standards

• For employment: “Dollar Tree, I went and I signed an application. They’ll hire me but they’re looking for a night person. I can’t be a night person. I have my two kids. … I’ll have to leave there here by themselves and I’m not going to do that.” – Sophia

• For housing: …”the [social service] assistant did not want to keep me in the area. And the one thing that really kind of irritated me with them the kids was already situated here. And they wanted to move us all the way to Norcross to an extended-stay that’s very drug-infested and very open with prostitution. I did not want to go there and because of that, it put them in a way where they didn’t want to assist here.”

Parental Coping Strategies:

Keeping Their Guards Up• “I went to the place where I’ve had a storage

unit and I knew that that place locked their gates at 9. So I secured the back of the car and put pallet and pillows for the kids to sleep. And, I pretty much stayed up all night watching them. (cries). And I waited till the gate closed. Then I knew that we were safe and nobody could come in until 6 the next morning. And we would get up and I would get them cleaned up and ready for school and take them to school. And we’d start over the next day. But um that was at a time when there was no money.” – Constance

Thank YouQuestions?

Publications

Lewinson, T. and Collard, C. (2012). Social service barriers experienced by low-income extended-stay hotel residents. Families in Society, 93(2), 74-79.Lewinson, T. (2011). Extended stay motels. Encyclopedia of Housing, 2nd ed. Sage.Lewinson, T. (2011). Capturing environmental affordances: Low-income families identify positive characteristics of a hotel housing solution. Journal of Community & Applied Social Psychology, 21(1), 55-70.Lewinson, T. (2010). Residents' coping strategies in an extended-stay hotel home. Journal of Ethnographic and Qualitative Research, 4(4): 180-196.Lewinson, T., Hopps, J. G., & Reeves, P. (2010). Liminal living in an extended-stay hotel: "Trapped" inside a housing solution. Journal of Sociology and Social Welfare, 37(2), 9-34.