Extended-stay hotel as home

Abstract

Housing plays an important interpersonal and sociopolitical role in American culture. Perceptions of personal achievement and life satisfaction in adulthood are often determined by the ability to maintain a career, purchase a nice home, raise a family, and afford the extra luxuries of life. In American culture, housing size, type, and location has always held deeper meanings about one’s societal position and importance. Residents’ experiences and relationships with a dwelling place have effects on psychological and social wellbeing. These relationships also influence residents’ perceptions of their living space as home. Despite the importance of a home, daily struggle for housing affordability is an unfortunate reality in American culture. Today, many of America’s working poor live transient lives doubled-up with relatives, in shelters and hotels, and in extreme situations, on the street. Low-income residents living in hotels as a housing solution are culturally invisible in society. The purpose of this qualitative study was to understand the relationships existing between residents and their extended-stay hotel dwelling places through descriptions of home. Ten participants were asked (1) How do extended-stay residents describe their hotel dwelling as home? (2) What aspects of the extended-stay living space contributed to or detracted from achieving a sense of home? And, (3) what strategies do hotel residents use to shape their environment to meet physical, psychological, and social atmosphere of a home? In addition to interviews, respondents also took photographs of their dwelling place and described in detail what about the selected places related to feeling like home. Findings of this study indicated that the hotel was only considered a temporary home while other housing arrangements were being planned. There were physical, psychological, and social aspects of the hotel that contributed to and detracted from the place feeling like home. Finally, residents either adapted their behavior or adjusted the environment to create a home at the hotel. Implications based on these findings were presented and future research recommendations were made.