San Francisco’s single-room occupancy hotels (SROs) have long been an important housing supply for the city’s working-class and low-income residents. Local law makes it difficult to demolish and rebuild these buildings, even as many age into disrepair, but a new law heading to California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s desk could override those restrictions.
Backers of the bill say it’s necessary to avoid what happened in Los Angeles’s Skid Row, where a nonprofit trust in charge of 29 SROs went bankrupt in part because it couldn’t afford repair costs.
“Skid Row Housing Trust was not unique,” Tiffany Spring, chief operating officer for the Southern California Association of Non-Profit Housing (SCANPH), tells The Frisc. “There are SRO buildings across the state that struggle to keep the lights on and need to be redeveloped.”
SB 21, which Newsom must sign by October 12 to become law, would make it easier to demolish and replace SROs in cities that haven’t built their fair share of affordable housing, according to the state’s housing department. That includes San Francisco.
The bill, which is the product of SCANPH and LA-based state Sen. Maria Durazo, arrives with San Francisco in the midst of contentious housing politics. While home prices remain sky-high, Mayor Daniel Lurie’s new housing plan, which backers want to finalize by the end of January, will allow taller, denser housing across the city.
Opponents say Lurie’s plan will fuel demolition, displacement, and evictions. (San Francisco currently has some of the nation’s strongest renter protections.) The plan also aims to produce tens of thousands of new subsidized homes, but that goal is up against difficult math.
SB 21 would allow a net loss of affordable units, up to 25 percent per project, when an SRO is refurbished or replaced. Bethany Renfree, legislative director for Sen. Durazo, says current law that requires 1-to-1 replacement isn’t practical with the cost of construction and maintenance. In other words, the new buildings would still be affordable, but the units could be larger.
Opening the door to fewer affordable homes — even with the tradeoff of better, safer, and more modern buildings — would seem to sound a potential alarm for tenant advocates. But there’s been little to no pushback. SB 21 sailed through eight different votes in the legislature without a single “nay.” Only two abstentions prevented total unanimity.
Very old buildings
SROs are a special form of affordable housing, offering tiny one-room apartments (sometimes fewer than 100 square feet) in aged buildings with communal bathrooms.
The SF Planning Department estimates there are some 19,000 SRO rooms across nearly 400 properties in San Francisco, although high turnover makes it difficult to estimate how many renters call them home at any given time. About two thirds are owned and operated for profit. The rest are in the hands of nonprofits.
SRO rents average around $890 per month in SF, less than half the citywide average for a studio. They’re all that’s keeping many renters off the streets. Most are concentrated in the Mission, Tenderloin, and Chinatown. “You’re talking about people for whom $100 can be the difference between making rent that month,” says Kevin Wong, co-director of the documentary Home Is a Hotel, which recorded the lives of SF SRO residents.
The buildings are often more than 100 years old and were never meant to serve as long-term permanent housing. The cost of maintenance in these aging buildings is exacerbated by high vacancy rates — up to 50 percent in some, according to the Planning Department.
According to a recent Pew Research report, the nationwide homelessness rate “exploded” as SROs disappeared. It also noted how the destruction of SF’s own Skid Row in the 1970s was a critical loss of working-class housing.
Protection since 1980
In 1980, SF passed the Hotel Unit Conversion and Demolition Ordinance (HCO), requiring special permission to convert or demolish an SRO, “in response to a severe shortage of affordable rental housing, particularly for the elderly, disabled, and low-income persons.”
Just this March, the Planning Commission voted 5-2 against letting an SRO owner near the corner of 4th and Market Streets convert the building into a standard hotel. (SB 21 wouldn’t have helped that landlord. The bill doesn’t make conversion of SROs to regular hotels or housing any easier.)
SB 21’s tenant protections say new units must be rented at the same level of affordability as the demolished ones for at least 55 years. When tenants have to move out, they get the right of first refusal on new apartments. There’s also a guarantee that no one can be removed more than six months before demolition, and if work is delayed or cancelled, their rent cannot rise.
Sam Moss, executive director of affordable housing developer Mission Housing, which owns five San Francisco SROs, acknowledges it’s “a little bit of a quagmire” because “governments and redevelopment agencies don’t have the greatest record with telling poor people they’ll get to come back” when the work is done. “No one would ever accept putting anyone out on the street, but we need to fix these buildings.”
Speaking about SROs generally, not his own portfolio, Moss says it will require “a significant amount of money from the public” not just for repairs but to relocate residents during the work.
Moving target
It’s not clear yet if SB 21 will spur SRO owners to make big changes to their buildings, or what the affordable housing and tenant advocacy communities feel about it. Other than Moss, people The Frisc tried to contact said little about the bill or did not answer queries.
“We don’t support or oppose it,” says Tan Chow, spokesperson for the Chinatown Community Development Center, another non-profit SRO owner.
SCANPH’s Spring says the SB 21’s authors consulted with SF’s Mayor’s Office of Housing and Community Development (MOHCD) and the Tenderloin Neighborhood Housing Clinic, a prominent affordable housing developer and owner.
I’d be surprised if anyone has really heard of it.
Tenderloin community organizer Curtis Bradford, when asked about sb 21
A TNDC spokesperson initially agreed to talk but did not respond in time for publication.
When asked about SB 21’s potential to change how SROs operate in the city, MOHCD spokesperson Anne Stanley said, “Our office does not have enough information to comment on its application.”
San Francisco Planning spokesperson Dan Sider also declined to speculate, calling SB 21 “a moving target.”
Sup. Bilal Mahmood, who represents the Tenderloin, said in a statement to The Frisc that “there are still unknowns” about the bill’s effects, adding that SROs are “critical in San Francisco.”
The Frisc also reached out for comment to several tenant advocates, including the Central City SRO Collaborative and the Anti-Displacement Coalition. None responded by publication time. “I’d be surprised if anyone has really heard of it,” says Curtis Bradford, a Tenderloin community organizer. Bradford said he has not followed the bill enough to comment and says it’s largely flown under the radar.
In short, it’s an odd state of affairs. A flick of the governor’s pen could soon change the renovation and demolition rules for nearly 20,000 homes for lower-income San Franciscans, at a time when certain city factions are stoking fears about displacement. When problems in those buildings crop up, from broken elevators to all kinds of health hazards, they don’t fly under the radar.
From praise to complaints
At the Apollo Hotel, an 80-unit SRO on Valencia Street owned by Mission Housing, complaints filed with the Department of Building Inspection over the past 18 months allege plumbing problems, trash, and vermin throughout the building, visible damage to interior walls, and old and rusting pipes.
In the late 1990s, Mission Housing spent millions of dollars on a 14-month renovation, and tenants praised the improvements. During our visit last week, Apollo residents who asked not to be identified complained of mold and showed photos of faucets expelling brown and yellow water.
A few blocks away at another Mission Housing building, the Altamont Hotel (a handsome Edwardian building designed by a celebrated Swedish architect), complaints to DBI allege that elevators are chronically broken, pipes are continuously leaking, and at least one floor lacks working showers. A staffer who did not wish to be identified said there’s only one maintenance worker in the 88-unit building. The staffer also alleged that many problems are caused by irresponsible tenants.
Mission Housing director Moss declined to comment on the properties.
At the for-profit 16th St. Hotel down the street from the Altamont, tenant complaints allege the building is riddled with black mold, and that the landlords leave exterior doors open at all times, even during the winter, to try to disguise the smell. (A DBI inspection did not turn up any violations.)
At the Frances Hotel at 2084 Mission, also for-profit, residents allege bad plumbing, hazardous wiring, inoperative fire alarms, and holes in the walls. An employee of the Mission Secrets adult boutique, which takes up part of the ground floor, showed The Frisc a hole in the ceiling where water poured in months ago, allegedly from an improperly installed shower upstairs. “This has happened before,” the employee added.
(DBI inspections earlier this year indicate that bathrooms were “being renovated.” For some complaints, inspectors confirmed violations that were later “resolved.” For other complaints, inspectors said they were unable to identify complainants and verify allegations.)
The Frisc was not able to reach the owners of the 16th Street Hotel and Frances Hotel for comment.
In response to the cited complaints, DBI spokesperson Patrick Hannan said, “Many of them are filed anonymously. While this protects the tenant’s identity, it also constrains our investigations, as we are unable to follow up with the complainant and often unable to gain access to the unit.”
Not all SROs are in appalling condition, but most are aging and facing challenges. SCANPH’s Spring says even well-intentioned owners are fighting an uphill battle. “Nonprofit developers bought these buildings in the 1980s as a public service, but they weren’t sufficiently funded for long-term maintenance,” she says. “The cost to operate them only continues to rise.”
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