Fifty children lived at the Economy Hotel on Old Dogwood Road in Roswell when the city shut it down in May 2025. A Fulton County Schools bus stopped there each morning.

The closure still reverberates. The Drake House, a Roswell nonprofit that led relocation efforts, hosts a community conversation Oct. 21 about the housing gap the shutdown exposed.

Roswell's fire chief issued an order to vacate on May 6, 2025, after inspections on May 1 and May 4 uncovered 22 life-safety violations. Problems included non-functional fire alarms, exposed wiring, widespread mold, structural decay and an inoperable elevator covered in plywood. 

The city accounted for 159 adults and 50 children at the property. In some cases, 10 to 15 people shared a single room.

The hotel had logged 110 violent crimes since 2022, including two of Roswell's six murders during that period, according to Police Chief James Conroy, as first reported by SaportaReport. In March 2025, officers found two missing girls had allegedly been lured there and sexually exploited. Six men, including hotel employees, were arrested on human trafficking, statutory rape and child exploitation charges. 

Violations at the property had escalated for years: two in 2021, three in 2022, four in 2023, then 20 found in the May 1, 2025, inspection alone. 

"Statistically, everything was in place for something catastrophic to take place," Interim Fire Chief Patel Troche told the Roswell City Council on May 12, 2025.

Residents were ordered out by 5 p.m. on May 10, 2025. The city set up a command center at the Summit Building, where staff coordinated rehousing and distributed meals, hygiene kits and transportation help. Roswell provided $25,000 in seed funding to The Drake House, and community fundraising eventually raised nearly $80,000 to support 111 displaced families, according to The Drake House. 

All 12 families with school-enrolled children secured housing by May 9, 2025. Fulton County Schools worked on-site and allowed displaced students to finish the 2024–25 academic year at their current schools. 

The gap between what those families could pay and what the market charges remains wide. The Economy Hotel cost about $800 a month. A two-bedroom apartment in the area averages roughly $2,000, according to The Drake House. Residents included daycare teachers, restaurant staff and store clerks who worked full time but could not afford traditional rentals in North Fulton. 

None of the emergency housing options were in North Fulton, forcing families to uproot one week before the school year ended. Only one hotel in the area agreed to accept the displaced families during the emergency, The Drake House reported.

An estimated 40,000 to 50,000 families in metro Atlanta consider extended-stay motel rooms their primary residence, according to a SaportaReport analysis published Sept. 28. St. Vincent de Paul Georgia's Motel-to-Home program, launched in 2019, reached its 1,000th family in August 2026. 

The Drake House event takes place Oct. 21 from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. Author Brian Goldstone will discuss his book "There Is No Place for Us: Working and Homeless in America" and the North Fulton housing crisis.