ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. — 9 Investigates spent most of 2016 looking into complaints about Central Florida's extended-stay motels and found out many of them are slipping through a gap in the law that leaves people living in unsanitary conditions with no way out.
After months of trying to get state inspectors to tell Eyewitness News how they're going to fix it, key questions remain unanswered. It's clear, though, that local government can't go inside the motels and force the owners to clean it up.
On South Orange Blossom Trail, hundreds of people are living paycheck to paycheck, 9 Investigates learned. Last spring, one family contacted 9 Investigates questioning whether the Great Value Suites was really a value at all.
"We picked it because it was pretty cheap, reasonable," a young mother told Channel 9's Field Sutton.
The mother and another man interviewed for our story declined to share their names, citing their fear of being kicked out of Great Value Suites. They said they had nowhere else to go.
After moving into the motel under a sign that promised family friendly security, the woman said she found her worst nightmare.
"Within that night, we started to see roaches," she said.
"They'll crawl on you while you're sleeping," the man added. "They just fall from the wall."
Inside the motel, he snapped pictures of walls covered by cockroaches and furniture filled with the bugs.
"I can barely sleep because we have to stay up and fight the roaches away from the children," he said.
Both agreed roaches were not their only concern. They described a laundry list of problems they believe management has done nothing to fix: including broken air conditioning, bed bugs and the presence of criminals like the man who ran through the complex recently trying to stab people.
"These aren't places that really are ever designed or intended to be permanent residences," Orange County Code Enforcement manager Bob Spivey said.
[ Photos: Filthy conditions at Orange County motel, residents say ]
Spivey said he and his team are legally limited to dealing with what goes on outside extended stay motels. Code enforcement can cite property owners for things like dilapidated cars and overgrown weeds, which Spivey said can, under the right circumstances, force a motel to shut down and fix things up.
But motel regulation is actually a state issue.
"There's a desire, clearly, for there to be a single set of standards and rules that the state administers," Spivey said.
The Division of Hotels and Restaurants does inspections, but 9 Investigates found relatively few instances of the them stepping in to take action. 9 Investigates contacted the agency for comment on the story and what it’s doing to combat sub-par living conditions in extended stay motels. A DHR spokesperson replied by email a link to the agency's web site and she refused to make someone available to discuss the problems uncovered by Eyewitness News.
Eyewitness News tried for months to get in touch with the out of state owners of Great Value Suites, but it was unsuccessful. The owner’s lawyer who lives nearby did not return phone calls.
Numerous in-person visits to Great Value Suites to discuss problems with the manager resulted in interactions like this one between Channel 9's Field Sutton and a desk clerk.
"Hi. We're looking for [motel manager] Leo," Sutton said after walking in with a camera rolling.
The desk clerk claimed the manager was not on site.
"I've been here like five times looking for Leo," Sutton said.
"Can he point the camera somewhere else please?" the desk clerk asked.
"No," Sutton said. "I've been here five times. People have complaints about the conditions here. When are we going to be able to talk to somebody about it?"
"I really wouldn't be able to tell you," the clerk said.
"When is he normally here?" Sutton asked.
"He's unpredictable!" the clerk responded.
The man and the woman interviewed for the story said they're working multiple jobs in an attempt to save up enough money to leave the Great Value Suites. Both indicated that the allure of extended-stay motels is the lack of the deposit requirement. They said the motel had seemed like a good idea when they found themselves in a financial pinch.
"I, I cry almost every night because this isn't what I thought it was going to be," the woman said.