Tilmeena Hart, 38, says she sometimes takes calls in the bathroom to keep her four kids from overhearing inside the single hotel room they’ve lived in since January. She doesn’t want them to worry. She lost her job as an aide helping transport students a few weeks ago after schools shut down.

Now, she’s out of money to pay for her room at the Ramada Inn in East Orange.

"I’ve been praying for a miracle," she said. "I’m praying that something comes through for me so me and my kids could be OK."

One of the hotel managers threatened to kick her out and shut off the water after she ran out of the money she was saving up to get her own apartment.

Hart said he told her she needed to get out. "Basically he was trying to put me and family out," she said.

But housing advocates say it’s illegal for hotels to kick out people like Hart. Even before the pandemic, state law says anyone who could prove long-term residence at a hotel or motel couldn't be evicted unless the owner took them to court first – just like any other eviction proceeding.

In late April, state officials clarified that Governor Phil Murphy’s moratorium on evictions also extended to those living in hotels and motels making it easier to protect people with nowhere else to go.

Jose Ortiz is the deputy director for Essex-Newark Legal Services that helped fight Hart’s eviction.

"We have a critical housing shortage in New Jersey, you don’t want to add to that," he said. "For a lot of families affordable housing is a room in a hotel."

Housing advocates say it’s important for these rules to be enforced and for tenants to know their rights. But there also needs to be a plan for what happens after the moratorium is lifted – to catch everyone who could suddenly find themselves without a place to live.