A motel in Gwinnett County asked the sheriff to evict several people from its property, saying they were squatters.
But the sheriff refused.
The ensuing lawsuit raises new questions about the rights of thousands of families in the Atlanta area who live in motels and when they should be considered guests or renters.
In the case before Gwinnett County Superior Court, S&A Suites argues that the people staying at the Budgetel Motel in Lilburn can only ever be guests. The company reiterates this in several places in the contract it has you sign: “The customer acknowledges that he is a valued guest of the hotel and not a resident/tenant.”
According to the company, this “guest” status meant that several members of a family at the motel last August no longer had the right to pay for their two rooms because they no longer had the right to stay. In fact, they have become squatters, argues S&A Suites.
But Gwinnett County Sheriff Keybo Taylor didn't agree with that logic and wouldn't follow the motel's request to use the state's squatter law. According to the lawsuit, he recommended that the motel go to eviction court, a legal process reserved for renters.
In the lawsuit filed last October, S&A Suites alleges the sheriff neglected his official duty to enforce the squatter law.
While the sheriff's office did not comment on the ongoing lawsuit, Taylor said in court filings that the law in question is intended for people who enter property illegally.
However, in this case, Budgetel let people into the motel and they had been paying for their rooms for months. A family member, Lataria Banks, said several of them have been there for a year and a half.
Banks said she only stopped paying because the motel charged them an unexplained fine. According to the lawsuit, it took about 10 days for the motel to contact the sheriff to remove them.
“No matter how long a resident lived at Budgetel before missing a rent payment,” the sheriff said in court documents, “Budgetel considers them to be criminal trespassers who will be ejected out of court.”
The lawsuit has tenant advocates like Erin Willoughby of Atlanta Legal Aid worried about the increasing use of trespass laws, which can force people to vacate a property within days. Eviction court, meanwhile, is expected to last several weeks.
The case also highlights the ongoing uncertainty over the status of families who are forced to live in long-stay hotels for months or years as they try to qualify for a house or apartment. The Southern Poverty Law Center estimates that at least 30,000 people in the Atlanta area could be in this situation.
Willoughby said these families have no home outside of their motel room.
“You get mail there. They have their facility there. Their children will be picked up from school there,” she said. “And did these people become tenants?”
That question recently made its way to the Georgia Supreme Court following a lawsuit against a DeKalb County motel. But the judges didn't give a simple answer.
The 2023 ruling said courts should evaluate the rights of motel guests on a case-by-case basis and apply a complicated legal framework that attempts to determine the intentions of the owner and the person staying at the property.
Attorney Samuel Mullman, who is representing S&A Suites in the current lawsuit, would not explain why the motel's long-term residents are guests under this framework, saying it would go into the details of the ongoing litigation.
However, he said it is not a sheriff's job to decide whether people at a motel are tenants, guests or squatters. That's a judge's job, he said.
To enforce the squatter law, the sheriff simply needs to file an affidavit from the owner, he said. If the resident can prove that they have the right to stay in the property, they can take the matter to court.
“The sheriff must never unilaterally decide which laws he or she wants to enforce on any given day,” Mullman said.
The family whose situation sparked the lawsuit has since left the motel, which has also changed its name to Live In Lodge. Banks said she was able to move into a home with her family.
She's happy to be gone.
She said managers continually charged her with fines for minor infractions, such as allowing her son to play outside even though she was present. After the payment issue, Banks said things only got worse. While the owner denies this, Banks said motel staff acted without the sheriff's help and removed her family's belongings from her room.
“It was nothing but problems,” she said.