What would make a successful real estate agent start living on her retirement savings to help people experiencing homelessness?
Advocating for unhoused families and children has become a calling for Sue Sullivan. She has done groundwork visiting with people living at extended-stay hotels in metro Atlanta and beyond to learn about their needs and experiences, and raise awareness of their circumstances.
Sullivan, 65, discussed her journey from selling million-dollar homes to advocating for families experiencing homelessness during an appearance on Let’s Start Healing Podcast’s 24-hour live event. The event raised funds for A Home for Everyone in DeKalb, an organization that helps people secure stable housing and with which Sullivan is affiliated.
Sullivan’s work has brought her face-to-face with families struggling to secure permanent housing, often while living in extended-stay hotels where conditions can be unsafe.
Sullivan was a partner in a study published this year by Georgia State University’s Center on Health and Homelessness, which found that 4,664 people, including 1,635 children and 2,004 households, were living in extended-stay hotels in DeKalb County.
Families can become trapped between costly weekly hotel rates and the expense of securing an apartment. The study found that the average monthly cost of an extended-stay hotel was $1,852, compared with average monthly rent of $1,789 in DeKalb County.
“We have to break people’s perception of what they think homelessness is,” Sullivan said, describing a woman she met through A Home for Everyone in DeKalb whose circumstances went from owning a home with her husband to living on the street.
“She says, ‘Look at me, this could be you,’” Sullivan recalled.
As a prominent advocate for people experiencing homelessness, political and community leaders are accustomed to seeing her at events addressing the issue. And residents of extended-stay hotels know her from visits to deliver clothing and other necessities and listen to their concerns.
Sullivan’s interest began before the pandemic while serving on the board of a DeKalb County YMCA. The organization launched a summer program to address childhood food insecurity, with volunteers preparing bag lunches for children living at an extended-stay hotel.
It was Sullivan’s first exposure to the living conditions of families staying in the hotels, she said.
When the pandemic began, she approached the YMCA about expanding its meal distribution efforts to extended-stay hotels.
“So it turned into just me and a 20-year-old YMCA employee, and we went out to this one hotel three times a week, and I really got to know these families,” Sullivan recalled.
She began asking residents what they needed and posted requests for clothing, toiletries and other items on Nextdoor, where neighbors responded with donations.
As DeKalb County schools shifted to virtual learning, Sullivan became concerned about children living in the hotels. She reached out to schools seeking information and eventually connected with a social worker who gave her a list of 70 extended-stay hotels where children were living, she said.
Sullivan went to the hotels with the largest number of children and began urging elected officials to visit and meet the families themselves.
“I could never turn away from there. Once I got out there, my eyes were opened,” she said.
Some extended stay hotels have been plagued by dangerous and unsanitary conditions. Last year, Roswell condemned a hotel that officials described as unsafe and unsanitary. Fifty children were living there with their parents, along with 49 animals. Police also identified the hotel as a location where sex trafficking was taking place.
Sullivan has witnessed dangerous situations firsthand.
“I’ve been at a hotel where a car pulls in, and somebody jumped out with a machine gun,” Sullivan said. “I dropped to the ground.”
A New York City native who was raised in New Jersey, Sullivan says she grew up living an idyllic life of privilege, including traveling to Europe every year.
As an adult, she built a successful real estate career selling million-dollar homes. The work initially gave her the flexibility to devote time to volunteering, but as her involvement with unhoused families deepened, she felt a growing call to do more.
In 2024, Sullivan left real estate to devote herself to the cause, drawing on her retirement savings.
“I knew this was work where I was supposed to be,” she said.
Sullivan says she’s also keenly aware that her background gives her access to people and places that may be out of reach for those she advocates for.
“I am very aware that because I am white, I can get into rooms that a lot of people that I am helping can’t get into. And so I am going to use every bit of my whiteness to do that,” she said.
But Sullivan believes those experiencing homelessness must ultimately have a place in the conversations and decisions that affect their lives.
“I’m a firm believer that lived experience needs to be in every room,” she said.
Until the people she advocates for are able to participate in those discussions themselves, Sullivan said she is committed to speaking up on their behalf.
She explained, “I always say, ‘I will be your voice until you have a voice.”
