Single-room occupancy
[11] The term originated in New York City, probably in the 1930s (the Oxford English Dictionary provides an earliest citation of 1941), but such accommodations predate the nickname by at least fifty years.
"[10] New York City police inspector Thomas Byrnes stated that rather than give SRO hotels "palliative" care, they should be dealt with using a "knife, the blister, the amputating instruments.
[12] In addition to banning or restricting SRO hotels, land use reformers also passed zoning rules that indirectly reduced SROs: banning mixed residential and commercial use in neighbourhoods, an approach which meant that any remaining SRO hotel's residents would find it hard to eat at a local cafe or walk to a nearby corner grocery to buy food.
[10] Indeed, since the end of WWII, the inexpensive hotels that became SROs were lost and not replaced, with the losses coming from conversion to office space, demolition, or upgrading to tourist rental.
[19] As the numbers of Puerto Ricans increased, overcrowding developed and bodegas and Hispanic-oriented stores opened; the elderly white middle-income residents became "hysterical on the subject of crime and safety", with community meetings held to deal with the issue of "foreigners" and "low types".
[27][28] NYC residents of illegal SROs are reluctant to complain to housing authorities about the condition of their units or rent regulation violations, as doing so could lead to their eviction.
[29] With the increasing popularity of Airbnb, an online room- and house-renting service, housing activists were concerned that the availability of SRO units would decrease, as landlords may find they can make more money from renting the rooms to tourists.
In March 2016, affordable housing advocates in New York City were pleased when a judge ruled that an Upper West Side SRO facility (the Imperial Court Hotel) could not rent out rooms for less than 30 days, a short-term tenure that would favour tourist rentals over lower-income long-term renters.
[30] In New York City, some public figures have been recommending that SRO's should be made available legally again, due to great increases in rental prices citywide.
[34][35] In the middle of the 19th century, gold prospectors, sailors, and seasonal fruit and vegetable pickers lived in San Francisco's SRO hotels during the winter.
In 2001, San Francisco Supervisor Chris Daly sponsored legislation making it illegal for SRO landlords to charge "visitor fees"—a practice long run in order for hotel managers to get a "cut" on drug-dealing or prostitution activities in the building.
[38] In 2014, City Attorney Dennis Herrera sued the owners and managers of 15 San Francisco SROs for "pervasive violations of state and local laws intended to protect residents’ health, safety and tenancy rights".
[39] Herrera alleges that the SROs harass or otherwise push out SRO tenants before they can get 30 days tenancy, which gives them protection, an action nicknamed "musical rooms".
[41] The problems in the city's old SRO hotels are "old buildings with aging infrastructure filled with traumatized or dysfunctional people who sometimes can be destructive or neglectful through hoarding, attracting vermin or willfully damaging property".
[43] By the early 1900s (decade), Asian immigrants from Japan and China who settled in Seattle were typically the men from the family, who moved to the city's Chinatown and Nihonmachi districts and lived in SROs.
A 1989 University of British Columbia thesis by Mercedes Mompel Antolin asserted that only 10–20% of SROs were of good or acceptable quality at the time of writing.
[59] SROs are a viable housing option for students, single tenants, seasonal or other traveling workers, empty nester widows/widowers, divorced men or women, low-income people, or others who do not want or need large dwellings or private domestic appliances.
[60] Some SROs are operated or funded by charities, non-profit organizations, and/or governments as a way to provide supportive housing to "special needs populations", which include people facing drug and alcohol addiction, mental health issues, or disabilities.
An article about "21st Century SROs" states that even though there is "still a stigma around SROs because of some of the experience of the last century", there is a "growing acceptance that small spaces can be well run and safe, healthy spaces to live and can be built more cheaply.”[62] Common's Williamsburg in Brooklyn rents single rooms where tenants share a kitchen for $2,050 per month; The Guardian states that "[s]ingle room occupancy housing is obviously not a new concept, however, the genius of late capitalism is that it has made it desirable" to high-income renters.
[18] "Luxury", "amenity-laden" SRO units are available for $2,150 from Common Baltic in Boerum Hill and for $3,050 per month from WeLive (the residential version of co-working company WeWork).
[64] In San Francisco, Starcity is converting unused parking garages, commercial spaces and offices into single-room residential units, where tenants (tech professionals are the typical renter) get a furnished bedroom and access to wifi, janitor services and common kitchens and lounges for $1,400 to $2,400 per month, an approach that has been called "dorm living for grownups".
[65] In Atlanta, PadSplit is a cohousing organization that converts single-family homes into single rooms that their members can occupy individually, with a shared kitchen and bathroom, along with wifi, and laundry facilities.
Others have been "cage" hotels, in which a large room is split into many smaller ones with corrugated steel or sheetrock dividers or cubicles, which do not reach the height of the original ceiling.
[68] In the popular imagination, SRO hotels "carry the stigma of vice and drunkenness", and in fiction writing, there are novels where SROs are used to indicate skid row conditions.
[74] In a 2018 paper, Barbic et al. stated that young adults living in Vancouver SROs were a "vulnerable" and low-income group with "complex health and substance problems compared to their peers in the general population", typically on "median two co-occurring illnesses, including mental, neurological, and infectious diseases", and all had "lifetime alcohol and cannabis use, with pervasive use of stimulants and opioids", and they had a great deal of contact with the "health, social, and justice systems".
[78] The hotel argued that the ID requirements were needed to provide a safe housing environment in what they called a "dangerous neighbourhood" with a "unique demographic" of individuals who are addicted to drugs and alcohol.
[78] The construction of new SROs or conversion of existing homes to multiple SRO units was banned in New York City in 1955 due to concerns that they provided "substandard housing conditions" that were "improper and unsafe".
Many SRO buildings, particularly in major cities, face strong development pressure for conversion to more profitable uses as condos, luxury apartments or high-end hotels.
"[82] In some old hotels that are now SROs, the nearby storefronts have transitioned from high-end restaurants and clothing shops (in the past) to "HIV-AIDS outreach groups, nongovernmental organizations, and social services offices".
[81] While most SROs are former residential hotels, some other building types have been repurposed into SRO usage, including mortuaries, dry cleaner facilities, nursing homes and schools.
