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Like many local homeless people in the Auburn area, Brian and his family have been housed in hotels by the Cayuga County Department of Social Services since September 2023. 

Brian, 52, his wife, Jennifer, 46, and their son, Brian, are currently living at the Rodeway Inn in Weedsport.

When Brian and Jennifer spoke with ÈËÊÞÐÔ½» in September, they were living at the Cayuga Inn at the Finger Lakes in Auburn, formerly a Days Inn. Before that, they lived at the Auburn Inn.

They described the conditions at the hotels as substandard: stained linens and carpets, unpleasant smells, signs of drug use.

Their descriptions match those of other homeless people interviewed by ÈËÊÞÐÔ½» in recent months, as well as observations from visits to the hotels and pictures provided by occupants.

But the biggest problem with living in a hotel room, Brian and Jennifer said, is just that — living in a hotel room.

"You can't live out of a microwave and minifridge," he said.

The Bells became homeless because they stopped paying rent on their last apartment after going without heat for six months, Brian said. Finding a new one has been hard. Many landlords charge up to $20 to conduct background checks, an emerging practice confirmed to ÈËÊÞÐÔ½» by several homeless service providers.

"How can I set money aside for a month's rent if it's taken me $400 to look at different apartments?" he said. 

Brian's livelihood has been decimated for the last nine years by a degenerative spine and nerve condition caused by a work injury, he said. He has 10 seizures a day, and is considered terminal.

A surgical procedure could have helped, he said, but it came with a 60% risk he wouldn't be able to walk again. Instead, he's been medicating with cannabis. He wants to be able to take care of his wife of 27 years and their son, who has autism and schizophrenia. In turn, she serves as her husband's nurse sometimes.

Also helping Brian are two emotional support dogs. They rouse him from seizures, he said, and take him home when he has "amnesia moments." But they've not been welcome with hotel managers. They're not certified service dogs, and though he claims otherwise, that doesn't give them the same legal protections.

The county's commissioner of social services, Christine Bianco, told ÈËÊÞÐÔ½» that emotional support dogs and other pets are common among the people her department houses in hotels.

"Having any pet live in a small room is tough for people to be living there, and having it be kept up the way it needs to be," she said. "That's why this kind of housing is not ideal." 

Another reason why housing homeless people in hotels is not ideal, Bianco said, is the cost to the county. It $2,567,000 to rent rooms to 455 adults and 175 children last year, which amounted to $1.3 million after state reimbursements. She said the cost of rooms this year will be at least as much, if not more. 

The Department of Social Services has received complaints about the hotels like the ones voiced by the Bells, Bianco said. Staff shares them with management and code enforcement. 

Other complaints the department can't do anything about, Bianco said, because hotels are ultimately businesses that can make their own rules. For the Bells, those complaints include the use of an outdoor common space at the Cayuga Inn at the Finger Lakes. Management closed it late in the summer, Brian said.

"We had a community," he said. "We'd have picnics to save money, and kept the kids out of trouble."

Instead, management asked the homeless people housed at the hotel to use a smaller, enclosed area as their common space. It made Brian feel like they were "prisoners," he said. Bianco said the change was a response to neighbors who about the hotel's occupants at the Aug. 22 meeting of Auburn City Council.

Despite what those neighbors may think, Brian said, he and his family aren't bad people. They've simply fallen on hard times — and hope to find a home that isn't limited to a hotel room.

"I got here doing the right things," he said. "I just didn't come out the right way."