{"id":8040,"date":"2018-01-18T10:00:28","date_gmt":"2018-01-18T16:00:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/?p=8040"},"modified":"2018-01-18T10:00:28","modified_gmt":"2018-01-18T16:00:28","slug":"sros-line-fit-unfit-housing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2018\/01\/sros-line-fit-unfit-housing.html","title":{"rendered":"SROs and the line between fit and unfit housing"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/File%3AAmbassador.jpg;<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll start by saying that I\u2019ve always considered<\/a> SROs, single-room occupancy hotels, that is, to be a key ingredient in the solution to the problem of affordable housing.\u00a0 It\u2019s a subset to the general solution of density:\u00a0 if land is at a premium, fit more people on a given patch of land \u2014 most obviously by building multifamily, multistory buildings instead of single-family homes (yes, even for families \u2014 Europeans and some city-dwellers accept that it\u2019s perfectly reasonable for a child to live in an apartment, however much the American suburban middle-class might find this intolerable), but also, within those multistory buildings, accepting\u00a0reduced levels of space per person.<\/p>\n

Now, granted, I have a certain idealized image of an SRO:\u00a0 a small room, to be sure, maybe the size of a college single dorm room, maybe smaller (since their inhabitants don\u2019t need the desk\/study space), with communal washrooms as well as a shared kitchen (with individual food-storage cabinets) and recreational space.\u00a0 In my mind\u2019s eye, it\u2019s like a European youth hostel, but with small private bedrooms rather than large open rooms with bunks.\u00a0 And I likewise picture it with spartan furnishings but kept appropriately clean and free of bugs.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s always seemed to me that\u00a0ensuring that zoning permits such housing is an appropriate way of enabling working poor single people to independently manage to pay for their own housing, without needing to wait for a spot on a subsidized housing list to open up.\u00a0 It also seems to me that these sort of people are also likely to have difficulty managing roommates, so that the idea of sharing a larger apartment might not be realistic.\u00a0 And it\u2019s my understanding that another feature of the SRO is that they are (or historically have been) available on a hotel-like basis, that is, without the need for the full month\u2019s rent and a security deposit.<\/p>\n

So that\u2019s the context with which I read a recent story in the Tribune, \u201cAs Wilson Men\u2019s Hotel prepares to close for renovations, a look at shrinking number of SROs in Chicago<\/a>,\u201d which reports on one such SRO, having changed ownership, being in the process of a remodel which will expand the size of, and double or triple the cost of, its units.\u00a0 At present, its units, 7 x 7 rooms, rent for $350 per month, after the remodel, the units will have their own kitchenette and bathroom, but the number of units will decrease from 250 to 80 or 90 and the rent will increase to $800 \u2013 $1300.\u00a0 Another SRO,\u00a0the Carling,\u00a0was gutted and, in the renovation, 155 units were reduced to 80, now with\u00a0individual\u00a0kitchenettes and bathrooms; because the going rate for the units is now above what the former occupants can afford, it has been turned into a city-subsidized affordable-housing building, with residents paying 30% of their income in rent and with an on-site social worker.\u00a0 Other SROs are being purchased by developers who are gutting them and then renting the buildings as, well, more ordinary apartments.<\/p>\n

Now, these units are not particularly homey places.\u00a0 They\u2019re called \u201ccage hotels\u201d because the individual rooms, lacking windows, are not fully enclosed, but have a \u201ccage\u201d on top, for ventilation.\u00a0 (See the picture at this link<\/a>; though it describes a particularly squalid SRO, it seems to be what these places look like.)\u00a0 But they\u2019re a vast improvement on the \u201ccage apartments\u201d of Hong Kong<\/a>, the dormitories of a Chinese factory, or even the apartments one reads about periodically, in which newly-arrived Mexican workers, to economize and send as much money back home as possible, squeeze a dozen people into two-bedroom apartments.<\/p>\n

And I admit that I don\u2019t understand the economics of it:\u00a0 is it simply not possible to build or convert a building into an SRO format in today\u2019s cities, at a market rent that would be affordable to the poor, because of the basics of building codes like properly-wired electrical service?\u00a0 Or do modern building codes specify a square-footage requirement per person, or require kitchenettes, prohibit communal bathrooms, and so on, that make it impossible to create new SROs at the low rents of buildings which are grandfathered into providing this far more economical way of providing housing?<\/p>\n

Which gets back to the question posed in my title:\u00a0 is it fundamentally acceptable, or not acceptable at all, to expect the poor to live in this sort of housing, but supporting themselves, vs. being allocated spaces in nicer, more spacious, but subsidized buildings?<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Image:\u00a0 the Ambassador Hotel, a historic SRO in San Francisco now managed as a nonprofit.\u00a0\u00a0https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/File%3AAmbassador.jpg; By Mark Ellinger (Mark Ellinger) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-sa\/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ll start by saying that I\u2019ve always considered SROs, single-room occupancy hotels, that is, to be a key ingredient in the solution to the problem of affordable housing.\u00a0 It\u2019s a subset to the general solution of density:\u00a0 if land is at a premium, fit more people on a given patch of land \u2014 most obviously […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2209,"featured_media":8041,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[397,824],"class_list":["post-8040","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-affordable-housing","tag-sros"],"yoast_head":"\nSROs and the line between fit and unfit housing<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"I'll start by saying that I've always considered SROs, single-room occupancy hotels, that is, to be a key ingredient in the solution to the problem of\" 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