An Oakland County extended stay hotel where homeless people were staying for weeks and months at a time has shone a spotlight on the area’s lack of shelter beds and affordable housing, with both local officials and nonprofit leaders saying resources don’t go far enough.

Earlier this year, the Auburn Hills City Council threatened to revoke the operating license of Suburban Studios, an extended stay hotel on Doris Road, east of Opdyke Road, for violating a city ordinance that limits how long people can stay in hotels to 30 to 90 days. A Royal Oak-based nonprofit, Kids Empowered, had been paying for more than two dozen rooms at the hotel for people facing homelessness.

But police said the hotel had become a safety issue and a strain on their resources, answering hundreds of calls at the property.

Aleyah Davis, who used to stay at the Suburban Studios and was living in a different hotel with her kids when she spoke to The Detroit News, said she’s found limited options in Oakland County and across Metro Detroit for those who need housing because most shelters are full. And last year Michigan paused issuing Housing Choice vouchers, also known as Section 8, and closed its waitlist because of a federal funding shortage.“It’s making people stay homeless. They’re not able to move because everything is closed,” said Davis, who lost her home in a fire a few years ago.

The conflict at Suburban Studios reflects the broader challenges cities face with homelessness while dealing with limited resources, along with a shortage of shelter beds and affordable housing in Oakland County, some said. The county has a goal of developing more than 11,000 new housing units over the next decade through new construction and the rehabilitation of existing properties.

Auburn Hills Deputy Police Chief Scott McGraw said the city saw an uptick in the homeless living in hotels during the COVID-19 pandemic because they were not filled with regular travelers as usual. The police department dealt with an increase in calls to hotels such as Suburban Studios as a result, he said, and was an impetus for Auburn Hills to pass its ordinance limiting stays to 30 or 90 days. The calls have often been for a mix of issues such as domestic violence, drug overdoses and stolen property, McGraw said.

“As police officers, we’re trying to help, but we also don’t want to hinder ourselves, either,” he said. “We want to make sure we keep our citizens safe and draw the line somewhere.”

The use of hotels for people facing homelessness is a symptom of a lack of adequate long-term housing, which he said would be a better use of taxpayer money than police responding to problems at the hotel.

“It seems like a lack of resources — it’s not even countywide — statewide, countrywide, for these folks who are homeless or displaced, and they’re using our hotels as that Band-Aid for a larger issue,” McGraw said.

A representative for Suburban Studios’ owner told council members at a meeting in mid-February that the company wasn’t aware that allowing people to stay longer than 90 days violated city code when it took over operating the hotel in 2023. But he told the council the hotel was willing to evict people to comply with the ordinance. The council ultimately chose to give Suburban Studios an additional 120 days to come into compliance, which would mean mid-June.

Kids Empowered founder Kimber Bishop-Yanke, though, said the hotel began evicting guests staying past the city allowance right after the February meeting.

“It’s something we do as a community benefit for homeless people,” said Peter Joelson, an attorney with Joelson Rosenberg representing the hotel’s franchise owner, told the council, adding, “It’s not a get-rich-quick scheme the hotel does to profiteer.”

Debate comes to a head

Auburn Hills’ decision to enforce its 2020 ordinance came to a head in mid-February when the City Council held a hearing about whether to revoke Suburban Studios’ license because of violations of the city’s length-of-stay ordinance.

Police Chief Ryan Gagnon and Devin Lang, the city’s assistant director of community development, described to council members a host of violations found through an inspection: a failure to document guests and the details of their stays; exceeding room occupancy limits; and safety problems, such as open electrical outlets and doors not latching.

The police department logged more than 400 calls to the hotel between Jan. 1, 2024, and March 17 this year, not including calls recorded as traffic stops, crashes or those opened in error, according to a log of calls for service obtained by The Detroit News. Several dozen calls were recorded as welfare checks, crisis outreach or mental health calls.

McGraw said he recalled a day when he heard two calls to the hotel over his radio within a half-hour period.

“It’s a drain on our resources for sure,” he said.

County officials and nonprofit leaders said homelessness inevitably spills into venues that aren’t built to address it when there’s a shortage of affordable housing and shelter space.

At Suburban Studios, residents and families found some stability: walking to jobs and having a place where school buses could pick up their kids for school.

For local officials to “disrupt it and make them move is a hardship,” said Bishop-Yanke with Kids Empowered. “And these families are already in trauma.”

The way the federal government has determined people are eligible for government-funded homeless resources disqualifies them if they are paying for their own hotel rooms, she added. It doesn’t help people who are paying for shelter but barely staying afloat, she said.

“That’s really the bigger issue. This 30-day, 90-day (ordinance) is problematic, but the bigger issue is there’s no pathway to help people,” Bishop-Yanke said.

Choice Hotels, which Gagnon said received a notice about the ordinance violations at Suburban Studios, declined to comment in an email, saying Suburban Studios is an independently operated franchise. A call requesting comment from the hotel’s manager was not returned. He was also not available when a reporter visited last week.

Auburn Hills City Council member Henry Knight said the city’s 90-day ordinance is to ensure hotels are used for their intended purpose and not as a stand-in for long-term housing.

“We’re not against the housing that you’re doing as nonprofits. We’re just saying, hotels are hotels, and they’re not long-term solutions to permanent housing,” Knight said.

A broader issue

Jennifer Lucarelli, a professor at Oakland University’s School of Health Sciences, said some circumstances exacerbating homelessness in recent years have been mirrored across the United States, such as rapidly rising rents after the pandemic and evictions resuming after a federal moratorium ended in mid-2021.

But she said some others have been more specific to Oakland County, including a capacity of a few hundred shelter beds for a population of nearly 1.3 million people and desirable schools that attract families who may otherwise struggle to afford the area’s cost of living.

Davis said she’s stayed in a shelter before, when she first returned to Michigan after escaping an abusive relationship in Georgia. But she didn’t run into this much trouble finding a space before.

“This has got to stop at some point. I don’t even feel right; I don’t feel like me,” Davis said. “I feel like my life is taken away.”

Continued struggles

Local organizations that work with homeless people are working to create more beds.

In 2023, the nonprofit Lighthouse announced a plan to expand its Pontiac shelter’s capacity permanently from 30 to 150 beds.

Brian Wright, the executive director of HOPE Shelters, another organization in Oakland County that works with the homeless, said the group has 60 beds at its main shelter, 12 additional floor mats and a 15-bed “recuperative” shelter for people leaving hospitalization. He said HOPE Shelters also has rented about 21 motel rooms in the past, with some money from the county.

Motel room rentals give “transition folks … a little bit more independence,” Wright said. “But the big thing is, I just emphasize that we move the people who are already successful on a plan into those motels.”

Dave Woodward, chair of the Oakland County commission, said the county has already supported the construction of about 650 housing units since funding the Oakland Together Housing Trust Fund with federal pandemic recovery money.

“This is a chronic problem facing all corners of the country, and the biggest concern is that we can’t even build ourselves out of it fast enough to meet the need that we know exists out there,” Woodward said.

Khadija Walker-Fobbs, Oakland County’s neighborhood and housing development officer, said about 1,000 new housing units have been developed in the county since 2023. The housing trust fund has financed 438 units dedicated to affordable housing, Walker-Fobbs said.

A five-year Blueprint to End Homelessness released by Oakland County in 2021, which called for the creation of a housing trust fund, said 41% of renters spent more than 30% of their income on rent. A person earning minimum wage would have to work 65 hours per week to afford to rent a “modest” one-bedroom home, the report said.

Uncertain next steps

Davis is trying to figure out her next steps.

Staying at a Marriott Residence Inn in Pontiac, where she’d been paying $100 a night out of pocket after moving out of Suburban Studios at the end of February, she faced more uncertainty after losing her job in March.

Inside her room on a recent weekday, the cartoon “Bluey” played on a wall-mounted TV. The room has a small kitchenette, and she’s been sleeping in the room’s one bedroom. Davis’ two children sleep on the pull-out couch.

The Madison Heights home where Davis used to live had a big yard for her kids to play in. But there was no room for toys in their hotel room. She couldn’t take them anywhere for activities because she doesn’t have a car.

Davis is worried about her kids.

They have been struggling emotionally because they don’t have the stability they need, she said.

Still, Davis dreams of returning to school and working in the criminal justice system. Her father worked for the FBI, she said, and an uncle is a detective in Detroit. Davis said she might want to become a judge.

“I think God is leading me towards the criminal justice system,” Davis said. “… I stand up for people that can’t stand up for themselves or speak for themselves.”