A hidden world: Desperation for hundreds of homeless families in D.C. motels

Tiera Williams, 25, and her four children Amari, left, 3, Ariyanna, center, 5, Isaiah, right, 1, and Quintin, in baby carrier, four weeks, prepare to leave a Days Inn in Northeast Washington. (Allison Shelley/For The Washington Post)

Tiera Williams, 25, reads a letter as her children Quintin, four weeks, Isaiah, 1, and Ariyanna, 5, play in the family's room at the Days Inn in Northeast Washington. (Allison Shelley/For The Washington Post)

By DeNeen L. Brown-January 28

Tiera Williams and her four children dodge cars on a winter evening as they cross the parking lot of the Days Inn to the Washington motel room the children call “Mommy’s house.”

“Hold his hand. I told you to hold his hand,” the 25-year-old single mother urges her oldest, Ariyanna. The 5-year-old with cornrows and pink barrettes grabs the hand of her 3-year-old brother, Amari, and they walk just ahead of their mother, who carries a newborn baby covered in a blanket in a bundle against her chest. With her right hand, Williams reaches down to guide her 1-year-old, Isaiah, bundled in a bubble coat and frog hat and running fast on little legs to keep up.

They pass the Checkers and the Dunkin’ Donuts on a busy, battered stretch of New York Avenue in Northeast Washington and walk alongside the black iron fence that encircles the motel pool covered by a green tarp. People at the Days Inn — one of at least 12 motels being used by the city to house 730 homeless families this winter — lean over the balcony that overlooks the courtyard lit by the December glow of yellow lights.

They occupy a hidden world of desperation and poverty mixed with every-other-day maid service, free WiFi, continental breakfast in the lobby, and lunch and dinner in the 170-room motel’s banquet room.

Little is known about the conditions at the Days Inn and other motels in Washington and Maryland being used to house homeless families. Like the shelter for homeless families at the former D.C. General Hospital, they are officially off-limits to reporters. And there has been minimal information provided by city officials about the welfare of 1,300 poor children living in such cramped quarters with struggling, mostly single parents.

[Hundreds of D.C. homeless families to ride out storm in Maryland motels]

Williams and her children pass mothers who sit in doorways, half inside their rooms, half outside, as they watch restless children ride bicycles in circles in the parking lot. A woman in a pink headscarf has pulled a nightstand out of her motel room and is yelling something incomprehensible at someone inside the roo

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