No vacancy

Gina Jones wears a pink shirt and a pink headband shaking a pink string her tiny dog tries to bite.

Pink pillows sit on a large bed that looks huge in a bedroom that a pink sheet separates from her bathroom.

Material is piled next to a sewing machine in the corner next to a lamp with no bulb.

Jones, 56, said she likes living in the Downtowner Motor Inn after what she's been through.

"A lot of times I like to think of it like my own little house with a motel connected to it," she said.

If Carson City starts to enforce a motel code, however, Jones and others who have just enough money to afford living in one of the more than a dozen motels in the city could have to move.

None of the motels has special permits that would allow renters to stay more than a month, according to the city. Officials started studying how the city could enforce the code following problems with the former owner of one of the motels, the Downtowner.

The city took away the owner's business license for not paying room taxes. It also temporarily closed the motel in 2005 for health and safety code violations, including sewage in the rooms.

Walt Sullivan, city director of developmental services, said the city wants to count how many people have lived in the motels longer than a month to enforce the code, but he has to figure out what is the best way to do it.

The city board of supervisors has said enforcing the code is important to deal with motels like the Downtowner.

Officials have said they don't know exactly how the city would enforce the code or if it will for certain.

But people like Gina Jones, who has paid for her nine months at the motel with fixed federal disability pay, or Sylvia Martin, who lives with four family members in a room at the Nugget Inn, often make just enough to keep them in a motel but not enough to afford the utilities and down payment costs that go along with an apartment.

Jones was approved for federal disability just in time to keep her from being homeless, but Martin could not get the money for a motel after her husband lost his job following an accident two years ago.

The couple was eventually able to move in with her family, but spent more than half a year in her car.

"I never want to live like that again," she said in her room where two double beds are cramped together. "Never."

Martin, who's lived in the motel about a month, said she's frustrated she hasn't been able to find a job after moving back to Nevada from California. The hardest thing about living in the motel, however, is not being able to give her 8-year-old granddaughter the things she wants, Martin said.

Sometimes her granddaughter says she wants her own bed and her own room.

"I know, baby," Martin tells her.

It's not clear how many people are living more than a month in Carson City motels, but tenants and mangers at several of them say most of the renters are there long term.

Kim Riggs of the Nevada Division of Child and Family Services said many of the more than 400 homeless children in the Carson City School District live in motels at least part of the year.

Some who live in cars, on the streets or near the Carson River move into motels at least for the winter, but aren't able to afford an apartment because they have bad credit or are not making enough money to save for expenses.

Chuck Jenkins, who has lived almost a year in Frontier Motel room with his wife and another couple, said he hasn't been able to find a job since moving to Carson City from Tennessee and hopes to move to Florida soon. He said he knows there will be jobs there.

"If I would have known for a fact that there wasn't no work here like I was told there was, we would have never gave our house up and we would have never gave our jobs," he said.

His wife does have a job as a cashier, but he said he hasn't been able to find one even though he's looked everywhere.

"It's bullcrap," said Jenkins, 40. "There ain't nothing out there."

Dave Price, 48, said he's looking for a job as a cook, but likes living at the Silver Queen Inn where he writes one $600 check a month for his rent, electricity, heat and cable.

A house would be nice, he said, but he doesn't have enough time left in his life to save for one, and he has other things to worry about.

"I'm hoping like hell to get a job in the next day or two," he said.

The city said it's too soon to be sure what would happen to people in motels if the hotel code was enforced, but Sylvia Martin said she would probably have to move into a homeless shelter if she couldn't live in the motel.

Gina Jones said she might have enough money to get an apartment, but she's not sure.

Her 40 years working in electronics added to her severe arthritis and she doesn't think she'll be able to work with her hands now.

"I just wore them out before they needed to," she said.

Many renters at the Carson City Inn have been there for several months, said Gogi Badhan, a manager at the motel, and they don't have the money for an apartment.

A lot are single, he said, and moved into the motel because they came to the city for a job.

The Warren Inn is quiet, rented mostly by retired people and not a bad to live in, said Fred Gavin, who has been at the motel with his wife for eight years.

He said he doesn't complain about living there because he doesn't have another choice.

In his 40s, Gavin said he didn't plan on living at the motel when he moved in, but it's not as bad as other people might think.

"It's like everything in the world," he said. "You spend what you have."

- Contact reporter Dave Frank at dfrank@nevadaappeal.com or 881-1212.