Daily Montanan37%
Most states temporarily house foster children in hotels, offices 22%
By Robbie Sequeira11%
8/5/2026, 4:32:53 AM
BS Summary: This article contains 20 faulty reasoning types, including Unattributed Quote, False Dilemma, and Negativity Bias, with Hasty Generalization as the most egregious example at 17% saturation with 80 hits. Analysis detected 675 faulty-reasoning hits from 470 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 28.5% and a BS Rank of 22% (23,933 of 30,584 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 78.30% of the article peer group.
More than 9,000 children in foster care had to temporarily stay in hotels, office buildings and other potentially unsafe settings when states couldn’t find suitable places for them, according to a new federal audit.
The inspector general’s office of the U.S.
Department of Health and Human Services found that states had an especially difficult time placing older children and children with complex behavioral and mental health needs.
The pandemic and the opioid abuse epidemic also created challenges during the period covered by the audit, which was January 1, 2022, to June 30, 2023.
When a court determines that a child should be removed from a home because remaining would be a risk to the child’s well-being, the responsibility for placement and care of the child is transferred to a state child welfare agency.
The preferred option in most cases is kinship care, or placement with relatives.
When kinship care is not available, states may place children with nonrelative caregivers, or in child care institutions.
Licensed foster care locations must meet certain safety and health standards and be approved by the state.
But of the 49 state agencies (including the District of Columbia) that responded to the inspector general’s questionnaire , 34 reported that they had to temporarily place children in unlicensed settings that are not designed to care for children.
Of those, 30 provided enough information for the agency to associate the stays with individual children.
Of the 15,705 temporary emergency placements tracked by HHS, 59% lasted four or fewer days and 28% lasted for five days or longer.
The longest stay, in a hotel, lasted 251 days.
The average length of stay across all reported placements was one week.
Seventeen states reported a total of 1,922 hotel room stays; 22 reported a total of 2,698 office stays; and 16 reported 4,412 stays at other unlicensed facilities, such as cabins in state parks.
Arizona and Texas alone accounted for nearly half of all the reported temporary stays.
Arizona reported 3,907 placements involving 3,481 children, while Texas reported 3,923 temporary placements involving 1,977 children.
Other states with a high number of emergency placements included Tennessee (1,845), Illinois (812) and Washington state (612).
Eight states (Alaska, Hawaii, Indiana, Missouri, Nebraska, New York, Ohio and Pennsylvania) did not track their use of emergency temporary placements, and Delaware and Montana did not submit any data.
Seven states (Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Utah and Wyoming) said they did not place any children in emergency temporary settings.
Stateline reporter Robbie Sequeira can be reached at rsequeira@stateline.org .
This story was originally produced by Stateline , which is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network which includes Daily Montanan, and is supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.
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2speakers13%attributed speech407writer words
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100%flagged-word coverageStates Newsroom
37 attributed words59% of attributed speech80% writer coverage
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