Since the abrupt eviction at the Express Inn and the notice of impending closure at the Plantation Motor Inn one month ago, the former residents of both motels have scattered across the city.
A young mother and her son are living week by week in a hotel, waiting for their rental assistance to come through so they can pay the security deposit on an apartment.
An elderly woman with mental illness has been moved to an assisted living facility, according to a hotel manager.
One woman and her fiance told The Current via text that they’ve been sleeping where they can: a night here or there in a motel, in abandoned buildings, or in the woods.
A former Plantation resident and member of the cleaning staff is living in a nearby Motel 6.
Many former residents have received assistance from ARCH, the Acadiana Regional Coalition on Homelessness & Housing, for a one-month stay at a nearby motel, as they wait for rental assistance and longer-term housing options.
ARCH director Elsa Dimitriadis says the organization conducted outreach to 66 households across both motels. More than half of those households now receive ongoing assistance. The majority of them are from the Plantation Inn, where a court-ordered closure came with a 45-day transition period, rather than an immediate closure as mandated for the Express Inn just days prior.
“The households receiving assistance are in different circumstances,” Dimitriadis tells The Current in a written statement. “Some are staying in temporary motel accommodations, while others have made arrangements with family or friends. We are continuing to work with households toward more stable housing solutions.”
That work includes helping households obtain and replace necessary documentation as well as navigate rental applications and apply for housing assistance through the Lafayette Housing Authority.
ARCH is also able to provide some financial assistance.
For that purpose, the Lafayette Housing Authority has made an additional $300,000 in housing assistance available.
According to LCG’s agreement with the Housing Authority, which an LCG spokesperson says is “getting routed to fully execute” at the moment, $150,000 of those funds are allocated to homelessness prevention and rehousing, including rental assistance, security and utility deposits, and application fees.
Another $150,000 has been allocated to a disaster housing reserve, in the case of the mayor-president issuing a local disaster declaration, meaning those funds aren’t immediately available to use in assisting evicted motel residents.
LCG provided another $100,000 towards emergency services, including “emergency motel accommodations, transportation, moving assistance, and related response expenses,” according to Dimitriadis.
Finding long-term housing for former motel residents is an entirely different task, however, and a difficult one to complete in a constrained housing market.
“Our objective is not simply to move someone into a rental unit as quickly as possible. We want to help households secure housing they have a realistic opportunity to maintain,” Dimitriadis says. “An unsuccessful placement that results in another eviction can make future housing opportunities even more difficult to obtain.”
Only a few rooms are still occupied at the Plantation Inn, following a move-out and relocation day hosted by ARCH on Nov. 2 and other tabling sessions they have held at the property. When the court order to cease operations was issued on Oct. 9, long-term residents were allowed to stay through the term of their existing arrangement with the motel, up to 45 days.
According to Dimitriadis, 28 households formerly housed at the Plantation Inn are currently receiving continued assistance through the emergency response led by ARCH, compared to six households from the Express Inn.
While the court orders to cease operations at both properties cited similar concerns around crime and public safety to support the measure, Express Inn residents only had hours to find alternative accommodations before the motel was shut down by law enforcement.
“Because the initial response was focused on emergency triage rather than ongoing enrollment, we did not collect contact information from residents during that response,” Dimitriadis says of ARCH’s efforts at the Express Inn. The six former Express Inn households currently receiving assistance reached out to ARCH after the initial eviction, during which ARCH passed out flyers and contact information.”
At the Plantation Inn, where residents received up to 45 days’ notice, “we had more time to conduct a structured engagement process,” Dimitriadis tells The Current. “We subsequently established tables on-site, where residents could meet with staff, review program requirements, discuss their circumstances, and complete agreements.”
Plantation Motor Inn manager Stacey Richard, who has worked at the property for over a decade and knows most of its residents personally, says she’s been impressed with how Dimitriadis’ organization has handled the move-out process at the motel.
“The ARCH is doing a wonderful job,” Richard says.
The security deposit required to begin renting an apartment can be prohibitively expensive for people earning low wages — in addition to other requirements around income, household size or pets.
As a result, many low-income residents rent rooms in the city’s motels, which require no deposit, but often cost more on a monthly basis than an apartment rental might.
“Once you start with a motel you can’t get out, you know. Because all your money goes to the room and then you can’t save,” Richard says. “If you’re not making this big, big money, nobody can do it.”
Dimitriadis says standard definitions of homelessness used by the Department of Housing and Urban Development, which provides a majority of the funding for homeless and housing service providers like ARCH, fail to capture that population.
“For example, individuals and families paying for extended motel stays, people temporarily staying with friends or relatives, and even people couch surfing within long-term motel households may not appear in our homelessness data, despite having extremely precarious housing arrangements,” she points out.
Accounting for residents in those precarious living situations is part of the goal of a housing needs assessment effort that ARCH is contributing to.
“We are working with the Reinvestment Fund + WRT [which are conducting the assessment] to help ensure the assessment considers these populations and draws from sources beyond the formal homeless response system, including education and other community partners,” Dimitriadis says.
The six-month needs assessment kickoff is scheduled for next week, and final recommendations are anticipated for spring 2027.
Meanwhile, at a press conference last month, Lafayette officials announced that five more properties might be shut down under the same “nuisance” ordinance that led to the closure of the Plantation Motor and Express inns.
Assistant District Attorney Chase Edwards framed the closures as a necessary step to prevent crime — saying, at the time, “we have to stop allowing there to be places where you can commit crimes all you want without consequences.”
At Tuesday’s council meeting, Mayor-President Monique Boulet’s chief of staff, Christina Dayries, appeared to cast some doubt on that approach — at least with regards to its effects on homelessness.
“We cannot simply move people from one location to another and consider the problem solved,” Dayries said in a presentation on homelessness to the city and parish councils Tuesday night. “We must address the circumstances that contribute to homelessness.”
Richard also doubts the effectiveness of that strategy.
“My opinion: Y’all just took a home away from them and nothing’s going to change,” she says. “I told one cop, I said, ‘Oh, since the Plantation shut down, everybody’s off of drugs and there’s no more crime!’ Well, he started laughing. He said, ‘Yeaaah, okay.’”
Richard is being paid by the motel’s owner to stay until the end of the initial 45-day buffer period — until Nov. 21 or 23, she isn’t quite sure. She is also speaking with ARCH about being eligible herself for long-term housing support.
But many programs have strict rules, and Richard is worried she won’t be able to have her grandchildren stay with her.
Meanwhile, she says the property’s owner is looking into converting the inn’s 83 rooms into Section 8 housing, of which there is a severe shortage in Lafayette.
She does not know how, or if, she might fit into that plan. “I’m still kind of waiting till the last minute,” she says. “But I’m prepared, a little bit.”
