KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — This week has been a headache for the Director of the Family Justice Center (FJC), Kathryn Ellis. She helps domestic violence survivors fleeing their abusers find a safe space to heal. Sometimes that means putting the survivor in a domestic violence shelter, safe house or hotel.
"When a victim comes in, we try to get them into a shelter if they need it. But if the shelter is full, then we do have the ability to sometimes make reservations at a hotel for one or two nights or three nights depending on the circumstance," Ellis said.
However, some local hotels have been turning domestic violence survivors away due to a "no local rental" policy. It's the first time Ellis experienced this. She said it's new.
"We have been doing this for years, where we are able to make reservations. And this week, we have run into multiple hotels telling us that they have a policy of not renting rooms to locals," Ellis said.
In this week's incident, Ellis booked a domestic violence survivor a room at a hotel on Merchant Dr. According to Ellis, the FJC secured a room with payment and provided the woman with the confirmation number. When she arrived at the front desk at the hotel, they turned her away.
"She was told very clearly that because she had a local address, that the reservation was going to be canceled," Ellis said.
Some hotels and motels on Merchant Dr. have started similar policies. For example, the Holiday Inn off that road has a "no locals" policy in place.
The hotel receptionist said they started the policy due to an uptick in crimes occurring in short-term rentals in the area. She said prior to the policy, they had issues with local renters disrespecting the rooms.
10News reached out to the hotel management and has yet to receive a reply.
Another hotel off Merchant Dr. with the same policy is Best Western. The manager, Sanil Patel, said he did not want to be interviewed on camera. However, he did explain the policy in more depth.
Hotel staff can consider each renter on a case-by-case basis. However, the idea to ban local rentals stemmed from criminal activities occurring within the walls of the hotel. Patel said prior to enacting the policy, they dealt with both drug issues and human trafficking.
Also, he said the locals were more likely to disrespect the rooms.
Merchant Dr. is an area of growing concern as it pertains to crime within inns, motels and hotels.
Murders, overdoses, fires, assaults, prostitution and drug trafficking are all taking place behind closed doors in some of Knoxville's motels, according to call logs, incident reports and data from Knoxville Police Department.
10News did an investigation into the crimes occurring in Knoxville's motels. You can read that article here.
The list of the most calls for service to motels for the past five years:
- Motel 6 in Cedar Bluff had 1,003 calls for service
- Regency Inn on Magnolia Ave. had 959 calls for service.
- Super 8 on Merchant Dr. had about 950 calls for service.
- Executive Inn on Chapman Hwy. had 893 calls.
- Value Inn on Magnolia Ave. had 892 calls for service.
There may be others on the list that are registered as "businesses" and not as short-term residential locations, hotels, motels or inns. Businesses are not included in the list.
One of the motels on the list from Merchant Dr. is Super 8. The owner, Jay Patel, spends the majority of his day monitoring the property and even has an extensive "Do Not Rent" list comprised of 200-300 people.
Many motels in the area have a do-not-rent list. The even stricter ones don't allow locals at all.
But Ellis said the blanket policy is having unintended consequences for people who actually need a place to stay.
"When you have worked up the courage to finally leave an abuser, that's very difficult. And then to think that you have a plan and have that plan basically be taken away from you with no backup. It's a very scary process," Ellis said. "If victims are turned away, there's always that possibility that they end up sleeping in a vehicle or that they end up sleeping on the street, or they end up going back to their abuser because they literally have nowhere else to go."
She said something needs to be done. FJC has to find these women a safe option and place to stay.
"This is not something that we as a community should be okay with," Ellis said.
She hopes to work out some sort of partnership with local hotels going forward.
"We do need it to be someplace that is going to be relatively safe, it needs to be someplace that is easy to get to. We are also looking for places that are affordable for a nonprofit," she said.