A knock on the door brings help for homeless families in motels

With the manager's permission, they knocked on 68 motel room doors. Inside, they found 22 homeless families, plus numerous homeless single people.

Of the 32 children the teams encountered, 25 needed to be registered for school. That work was done on the spot by three Madison School District employees.

The homeless adults were offered access to housing, food and employment resources, and thousands of dollars of donated items and gift cards were distributed. It was the second such effort, and another is planned for next month.

The initiative, called Operation Giving Hope, grew out of Madison Police Detective Maya Krajcinovic's efforts to stop human sex trafficking. As her work took her to motels, she came into contact with a large number of homeless children.

"I was not ready for that," she said. "It would be a gorgeous day outside, yet these kids would basically be stuck in a motel room because their parents were overwhelmed and didn't know what to do."

In one case, a 10-year-old boy was taking care of his 6-year-old brother while their mother was away for three days working as an escort in the Wisconsin Dells area, Krajcinovic said.

Many of the adults at the motel on Aug. 27 were the working poor — one father was employed full time at Oscar Mayer, Krajcinovic said. The families couldn't find affordable housing and were spending $800 to $1,000 a month for motel rooms.

"We're raising children in hotels," said Jani Koester, a Madison School District teacher who took part in the effort. "When families are backed up against the wall, they'll do whatever they can to put a roof over their head. But with the cost of motels, often families can't sustain that for very long."

In many cases, the money spent on motels would be enough to pay rent, Koester said, but there can be many barriers to doing that, from bad credit histories and prior evictions to the intense competition in Madison for affordable housing.

Many of Madison's cheaper motels fill up during the week with homeless people, Krajcinovic said. When rates rise on weekends, many homeless people are forced to sleep in their vehicles, she said. That's especially true when special events like Badgers football games and the World Dairy Expo monopolize rooms.