Great article. While I can’t imagine running a SRO- a task for a staff with case managers, on another level, allowing good new fashioned boardinghouses to function properly is another way to allow for single rooms in a large house to be occupied in any number of configurations to shelter more people.
In a boarding house it is up to the resident owner, or manager to create a set of house rules for the co-tenants to live in a place of mutual respect and well-being. That “head of the household” has a responsibility to fairly manage and adjudicate this co-living space and warn and evict when merited a person for unacceptable behavior. Careful screening, and a compassionate, flexible perspective will foster peace and stability for all residents.
The problem is that there is only one set of just cause eviction control rules that cover all rental situations. This effort to create housing stability has the effect of drastically limiting the ability for the person responsible to manage such a rooming house when it comes time to move someone along that is incompatible.
Laws such as this, and an impacted court system are a poor solution to resolve the complexities of people living together. We need to reexamine, experiment, allow for innovation in providing housing, especially to an already stressed population.
Thanks, John—and I 100% agree. So many of the rules and regs we've implemented have been done in the name of helping people, but on balance they've made our housing markets dysfunctional and people worse off. A thorough reexamination is due!
Powerfully written, thank you Ryan. SROs weren’t just sources of housing stability, they were basically the first rung in the latter of economic mobility. We as housers have some work to do sharing the history about just how low the cost of housing at the bottom of the market can be. It’s hard for most to imagine that outside major recessions the U.S. had very little homelessness in the past, even though we spent way less tax money subsidizing housing
I like Alain Bertaud’s justification in Order Without Design for allowing really low quality housing to exist: People know their own consumption preferences best, and they should be free to save money by living in low cost housing so they can choose to spend it on other things they find more valuable
I often wonder whether the stricter regulations make it harder for cities to provide low-budget housing. Cities used to have a lot of 'Room to let for 50 cents' kind of rooms, but now they have all closed down, and the men who used to live in them live in tents. Bristol, UK, where I live, has hundreds of homeless people who should be living in low-budget housing.
Excellent article. In the 1950's, my mother lived in a 'unmarried women's hotel' in San Francisco while she worked her first job. I disagree, though, that SRO's would solve the issue of street homelessness. The vast majority of street homeless are mentally ill/substance abusing--people who used to be housed, not in SRO's, but in locked ward institutions. What SROs will help is the millions of (mostly young) working people who either live with parents or spend huge chunks of their paycheck on rent on a crowded shared apartment.
Thanks, Cynthia! I see SROs as *part* of the solution to the homelessness problem; but I think the bigger boon is, as you point out, in helping those at the low end of the income spectrum who just want a cheap place to live. That'd do a world of good on its own!
You seem to have knowledge of the population I would expect only from someone who screened admissions to a shelter. You must have seen hundreds of applicants.
Nope Erik I've simply lived in San Francisco and Los Angeles for most of my life, coming in contact on a daily basis with street homelessness for the past twenty five years. I have never seen one person physically living on the street who is not mentally ill/addicted. I have also seen numerous sane, impoverished people who: lived in their cars and vans, a friend's couch, parent's basement, a closet at their university, in a back room at work, with six other people in a shared garage, camping at BLM sites and open spaces, and, lastly, in shelters and subsidized housing. Sane, non-high people will basically do anything to do avoid sleeping on a sidewalk because it's uncomfortable, illegal, and extremely dangerous. Also, the belief that street homeless lack housing is often wrong. For instance, a close friend's schizophrenic daughter abandoned the (extremely nice) apartment they were renting for her and wandered the streets of Los Angeles for the next ten years. My friends constantly tried to bring her back, but there was no legal mechanism to do so. During Covid, SF temporarily housed hundreds of street homeless in hotels. There were literally hundreds of drug overdoses in them and the hotel owners sued the city for the millions in damages these troubled folks caused, ranging from ripping the walls down to arson. We will never solve homelessness when we constantly conflate mentally ill/addicted street homelessness with the issue of poor people in shared/substandard housing. The former need legal conservation in locked treatment facilities--not housing. The sane and functioning are the only group who can actually benefit from low-cost housing.
Thank you for writing back. My reply was a bit sarcastic. I've visited San Francisco and had to deal with the aggressive panhandlers. Your city is unique. But it is a very interesting topic in this blog, how so many housing needs were met in the past that we're so unaware of. I just don't believe in generalizations without data.
In my city, I managed a mid-size freezing weather shelter for many years. I have seen hundreds of "street" dwellers. On a freezing weather night, I would take in one busload of about 50 pre-screened men (one night they sent the women's bus too, oops, but we were able to feed everybody.) I gained an appreciation of all the ways there are to become homeless. I have also ministered at the city's official shelter, after a night when someone had died in bed. We do have our share of ranting, disturbed folks, they are in the crowd there well before dawn. My shelter bunch were on their best behavior, since one report from me would get them banned.
I have also walked the homeless census in my city, and been welcomed into the parkland camps and behind-the-dumpster klatches. One fellow was sort of a leader: he summoned 20 men from the underpasses, drainage ditches, wooded areas, and who knows where. They all wanted to write the long form census. Several were no doubt addicts, some could barely speak for themselves, but they all had stories. Later I learned that many of that group had got into the transitional housing program.
Great article! It seems like a rebrand is needed to re-establish this housing type. While we have thousands of “dormitory” units for college students, we seem to have forgotten that adults could benefit from that housing type, regardless of their educational status. I like the idea of office conversions you present in the article; I also think an adult dormitory boom could take place in college towns across the country….
Thanks, Lonny! I think you’re right: a rebrand would help! I don’t know if it’s “adult dorms” or something else, but the basic concept is already widely understood in other contexts, so we ought to make that connection!
Although the current lack of SRO’s is concerning, in my opinion the major issue in today’s homelessness crisis is not the lack of housing. It's the refusal of society to say no. No, you can't camp in this city. No, you can't shit in the streets. No, you can't panhandle aggressively. No, you can't shoot up publicly and leave your used needles lying around. The fact that we are not going to allow you to destroy our city by doing these things is not our problem. It's your problem. You can solve your problem by not doing drugs, getting help for your mental problems, getting a job, and sharing rent with others so inclined until you can afford a place of your own, probably in a lower cost community. This is not going to happen because the people we have elected allow the homeless to wallow in their victimhood rather than accept personal responsibility for their self destructiveness. What specific steps should be taken by cities to deal with the problem? Cities should use all existing shelters and further provide simple shelter space with surplus military tents with mess and recreational tents, a medical tent and restroom and shower facilities (the way I lived in the army) on leased or purchased unused commercial or industrial sites on the outskirts of the city. As many who want to and are able to work should be hired to help feed others and to maintain the facilities. Individuals could use surplus military squad tents or their own for sleeping. When those facilities are available the city should send in crews to clean up existing encampments, without arresting anyone who does not physically resist. Custodial care should be mandatory for those who are so mentally or drug addicted that they cannot care for themselves. As noted in the article we did a huge disservice to the mentally ill when we closed rather than reform our state mental hospitals. We need them back. This approach actually would cost far less and be far more effective than the current housing first attempts to fix the problem. Most of the homeless today are not the same people that populated the SRO’s of the last century and lack the capacity to live unassisted in modern society but that is not an excuse to destroy our beautiful cities and drive out our productive citizens.
Ryan: You certainly have more knowledge of the problem than I do but I just don’t think the Houston approach is widely applicable. I didn’t vote for Trump but perhaps something that Andrew Sullivan recently said indicates his approval of the administration’s get tough approach. Andrew recently returned to his neighborhood in D.C. after his annual summer on the Cape. He immediately noticed that in walking around he felt safer than before because there were fewer crazy people coming up to him. He credited the change to Trump’s intervention in how the city was policed. My uninformed suggestion simply moves the problem to the outskirts of the affected communities with the intent of giving the remaining productive residents a chance to enjoy the peace of mind that Andrew has so welcomed.
Hi Dave: I don't know if Houston's success is replicable; but it's notable that it's a different approach that has made a big difference there—it's at least worth studying! I agree that we should not tolerate flagrant disorder in public spaces; I think it's bad for regular people going about their lives, bad for cities, and bad for the people causing the disorder. But as we've seen in Austin, merely banning camping did not end homelessness; it just, as you suggest, moved them further out—to the consternation of the people who live in those parts of town.
This is a complex issue building on 50 years of bad policy, and there are no quick fixes. Housing is a big part of the solution, but so is drug and mental health policy. I think we're likely to make policy mistakes if we only focus on what we see in our immediate neighborhoods, and not look at the problem regionally. I'm glad Andrew and other residents of DC feel safer—that should be the goal we aspire to for our cities!—but I suspect somebody else in town is feeling the brunt of it.
Great article. Another part of this story is how backlash to small, low-end, unsubsidized housing is still potent in contemporary politics.
Seattle had quite a big boom in micro-housing in the early 2010s, but strong NIMBY backlash and concerns about livability drove a series of zoning and building code changes to close the “loopholes” builders were using. These steadily made the ~175 sf micro-apartments (which penciled at $900/month) illegal to build, and pushed the practical minimum up to 250-300 sf (penciling at $1200-1400).
Thanks, Jesse! The concerns about livability are just so rich. It might not be my preference, but I’m sure it beats life on the streets! Too bad about Seattle’s experience—are you working on fixing it? 😉
Many of the Y rooms in the oldest still standing YMCAs in the country still exist around Boston. They are all integrated into various low income housing/homeless services programs. Some are general subsidized extremely low income, some are transitional or permanent housing for homeless individuals and some are now family emergency shelter rooms. I think the organization switched focus to families sometime in mid century, some ymcas operate family shelter/housing but none that I know of operate their own programs for homeless individuals.
Thanks for sharing this! The last good stat I could find was from 2004, and then only local news stories about closures since then. The Y’s website and financial statements don’t seem to have any data about housing units, either. I’d love to know the current stats!
Very interesting and well written. As someone who lives in a studio apartment in a cooperative apartment building, that was originally a hotel. i am more in favor of studios--if the volume of empty office building space allows it. SROs should be secure, of course. In any case, a lot more public money has to be spent on building and maintaining housing.
Thank you, Jonathan! I've lived in an efficiency apartment in Tokyo and an extended stay in suburban SoCal for work assignments—smaller than studios, more amenitized than SROs—but they were functional and what I needed at my price point. But that last part is key: while I'm sure most people would prefer the most space/amenities they can get for their dollars, in most places the SRO option just doesn't exist at any price point. We should make it possible for as many options to exist at various prices points and preferences in our cities, and then let people decide. Because of the history, though, you're right: it will take public money.
Thank you for taking the time to read and reply to my comments as I imagine you can get a lot of responses. I realized afterward that a lot of these SROS were in neighborhoods that became desirable--I know that is probably an obvious observation, but one leading to the question of managing gentrification, if that is at all possible. Thank you.
I really appreciate the comments—in fact, I wish more people would engage. So thanks!
You’re right: gentrification certainly played a role. While a lot of that is a natural part of the economic life cycle of neighborhoods, places like NYC had policies and tax abatements that explicitly targeted SROs for redevelopment, rapidly accelerating what might have been a slower process. The bans on new SROs, plus density restrictions in cheaper neighborhoods, meant that new supply could not naturally emerge where it might otherwise. The destruction of SROs was certainly a multi-causal phenomenon, but policy choices played a major part.
Excellent article. I’ve long felt that the loss of low-cost residential hotels has made the homeless crisis worse. In the early 1980s there were old residential hotels on the same downtown Sacramento, CA block as the bus station. Few homeless in the streets. The whole area has been redeveloped and the bus station is no longer downtown. But tenants similar to the ones formerly using the SRO hotels are still with us; just on the street now.
I like this idea. The problem is that, as a resident of DC, I don’t want to live or work anywhere near a building like this. I’m not alone in this sentiment. If we don’t bring back some form of institutional care for whatever portion of the current unsheltered population that isn’t well enough to care for themselves, new buildings like these will be exactly what the progressive reformers claimed they would be.
Hi Cam, thanks for the comment. For our existing population of chronically homeless people, SROs themselves would not necessarily be the right option. Permanent supportive housing or institutional care is probably more sensible. The goal in re-legalizing SROs would be to restore the bottom rung of the housing market as a *preventative* measure, to help lower-income people from ever entering into homelessness in the first place. The problem is a lot more manageable when it's just a housing affordability issue; once somebody enters homelessness, it becomes increasingly likely that it will become a mental illness or substance abuse issue, too—and then it's much harder, and more expensive, to solve.
Yeah that makes sense. Have lots of (mostly male) friends who would have found buildings like this helpful when they first moved to a city. Would help people make connections when they move to a new city as well.
The people living in these places were policed very stringently. If you didn't pay you were kicked out. Drugs were not allowed. Bringing back women was not allowed. Many were run by the YMCA which stands for Young Men CHRISTIAN Association
Thanks for talking about this! I have lots of opinions about housing but the one currently rolling around in my brain is that while we need new housing in many places, we also need diverse housing as well. Apartments of various sizes, co-living/houseshare situations, SFH, and yes, affordable SROs too. Housing cost and homelessness are complex problems that cannot be solved with a band aid like BMR programs.
YMCA - Young Men’s Christian Association. Need I say more?
Many SRO buildings were single-sex and run by charitable organizations that were staffed by Christians of various denominations.
Non-discrimination laws destroyed the YMCA and other similar organizations like it. The free market is simply not as pro-social as people were in the past.
Part of the reason why we don't have such housing anymore is that we are no longer Christian and charitable. I'm not suggesting we need to get religion again, but something has definitely been lost.
But this kind of housing is not going to work in modern America, regardless of available former office space, unless we're clear about a few things.
The housing has to be profitable, including paying the salaries for a desk clerk, a social worker, and a bouncer. The clerk is there to manage access and determine when either of the two services are required. The social worker is there to deal with soft problems with the objective of making the place livable for residents who are not disruptive. The bouncer is there for hard problems, like psychotics off their meds, that require quick and efficient violence.
Both the social worker and the bouncer have to accommodate each other for things to work. The social worker can't try to stop the bouncer from restraining someone because some medical intervention is coming hours from now, and they can't charge the bouncer with assault, unless they're abusive beyond the needs of the situation.
Everything I've said above is possible if we quietly overlook a few laws and the police go along. But no CEO and their right mind would want to invest in such a situation, and no real world social worker would acknowledge the need for a bouncer.
Very thought-provoking. I have experienced homelessness and navigated it but I had resources. My job offer was rescinded after September 2001. I became familiar with the NYC flop house reviews online. There were only half a dozen. It crushed my soul looking at one. My knowledge of old "NY on $100 a day" books led me to American Hotel, a dorm-style still at $360/week. Like many other single adults, I found an illegal room share out in Taxistan. My two buddies lived in illegal basement conversions at one point. For that type you need a lease--impossible when life is uncertain. I only spent one night on the street (subway actually, you can ride a long way) but there are few options when you've exhausted your welcome on other people's couches.
"This arrangement for housing the down-and-out works if the manager can throw a misbehaving tenant out instantly. Otherwise, one bad apple spoils the barrel.
Under modern landlord-tenant law (in CA, at least), throwing a misbehaving tenant out takes months and costs four or five figures, which makes operating an SRO safely & profitably extremely difficult (viz. the troubles besetting the SRO Housing Corp. in LA).
(Note that this same dynamic makes operating co-living very difficult, which is why we have been hired to transition at least one one large co-living asset to conventional rentals, with more possibly on the way.)"
Great article. While I can’t imagine running a SRO- a task for a staff with case managers, on another level, allowing good new fashioned boardinghouses to function properly is another way to allow for single rooms in a large house to be occupied in any number of configurations to shelter more people.
In a boarding house it is up to the resident owner, or manager to create a set of house rules for the co-tenants to live in a place of mutual respect and well-being. That “head of the household” has a responsibility to fairly manage and adjudicate this co-living space and warn and evict when merited a person for unacceptable behavior. Careful screening, and a compassionate, flexible perspective will foster peace and stability for all residents.
The problem is that there is only one set of just cause eviction control rules that cover all rental situations. This effort to create housing stability has the effect of drastically limiting the ability for the person responsible to manage such a rooming house when it comes time to move someone along that is incompatible.
Laws such as this, and an impacted court system are a poor solution to resolve the complexities of people living together. We need to reexamine, experiment, allow for innovation in providing housing, especially to an already stressed population.
Thanks, John—and I 100% agree. So many of the rules and regs we've implemented have been done in the name of helping people, but on balance they've made our housing markets dysfunctional and people worse off. A thorough reexamination is due!
Yep https://xcancel.com/moseskagan/status/1990099906686792170#m
Powerfully written, thank you Ryan. SROs weren’t just sources of housing stability, they were basically the first rung in the latter of economic mobility. We as housers have some work to do sharing the history about just how low the cost of housing at the bottom of the market can be. It’s hard for most to imagine that outside major recessions the U.S. had very little homelessness in the past, even though we spent way less tax money subsidizing housing
I like Alain Bertaud’s justification in Order Without Design for allowing really low quality housing to exist: People know their own consumption preferences best, and they should be free to save money by living in low cost housing so they can choose to spend it on other things they find more valuable
Thanks, Jeremy! And amen.
I often wonder whether the stricter regulations make it harder for cities to provide low-budget housing. Cities used to have a lot of 'Room to let for 50 cents' kind of rooms, but now they have all closed down, and the men who used to live in them live in tents. Bristol, UK, where I live, has hundreds of homeless people who should be living in low-budget housing.
Yes, I'm sure it does. I don't know the particulars of Bristol, but the UK has made it very difficult to build new housing.
Excellent article. In the 1950's, my mother lived in a 'unmarried women's hotel' in San Francisco while she worked her first job. I disagree, though, that SRO's would solve the issue of street homelessness. The vast majority of street homeless are mentally ill/substance abusing--people who used to be housed, not in SRO's, but in locked ward institutions. What SROs will help is the millions of (mostly young) working people who either live with parents or spend huge chunks of their paycheck on rent on a crowded shared apartment.
Thanks, Cynthia! I see SROs as *part* of the solution to the homelessness problem; but I think the bigger boon is, as you point out, in helping those at the low end of the income spectrum who just want a cheap place to live. That'd do a world of good on its own!
You seem to have knowledge of the population I would expect only from someone who screened admissions to a shelter. You must have seen hundreds of applicants.
Nope Erik I've simply lived in San Francisco and Los Angeles for most of my life, coming in contact on a daily basis with street homelessness for the past twenty five years. I have never seen one person physically living on the street who is not mentally ill/addicted. I have also seen numerous sane, impoverished people who: lived in their cars and vans, a friend's couch, parent's basement, a closet at their university, in a back room at work, with six other people in a shared garage, camping at BLM sites and open spaces, and, lastly, in shelters and subsidized housing. Sane, non-high people will basically do anything to do avoid sleeping on a sidewalk because it's uncomfortable, illegal, and extremely dangerous. Also, the belief that street homeless lack housing is often wrong. For instance, a close friend's schizophrenic daughter abandoned the (extremely nice) apartment they were renting for her and wandered the streets of Los Angeles for the next ten years. My friends constantly tried to bring her back, but there was no legal mechanism to do so. During Covid, SF temporarily housed hundreds of street homeless in hotels. There were literally hundreds of drug overdoses in them and the hotel owners sued the city for the millions in damages these troubled folks caused, ranging from ripping the walls down to arson. We will never solve homelessness when we constantly conflate mentally ill/addicted street homelessness with the issue of poor people in shared/substandard housing. The former need legal conservation in locked treatment facilities--not housing. The sane and functioning are the only group who can actually benefit from low-cost housing.
Thank you for writing back. My reply was a bit sarcastic. I've visited San Francisco and had to deal with the aggressive panhandlers. Your city is unique. But it is a very interesting topic in this blog, how so many housing needs were met in the past that we're so unaware of. I just don't believe in generalizations without data.
In my city, I managed a mid-size freezing weather shelter for many years. I have seen hundreds of "street" dwellers. On a freezing weather night, I would take in one busload of about 50 pre-screened men (one night they sent the women's bus too, oops, but we were able to feed everybody.) I gained an appreciation of all the ways there are to become homeless. I have also ministered at the city's official shelter, after a night when someone had died in bed. We do have our share of ranting, disturbed folks, they are in the crowd there well before dawn. My shelter bunch were on their best behavior, since one report from me would get them banned.
I have also walked the homeless census in my city, and been welcomed into the parkland camps and behind-the-dumpster klatches. One fellow was sort of a leader: he summoned 20 men from the underpasses, drainage ditches, wooded areas, and who knows where. They all wanted to write the long form census. Several were no doubt addicts, some could barely speak for themselves, but they all had stories. Later I learned that many of that group had got into the transitional housing program.
Great article! It seems like a rebrand is needed to re-establish this housing type. While we have thousands of “dormitory” units for college students, we seem to have forgotten that adults could benefit from that housing type, regardless of their educational status. I like the idea of office conversions you present in the article; I also think an adult dormitory boom could take place in college towns across the country….
Thanks, Lonny! I think you’re right: a rebrand would help! I don’t know if it’s “adult dorms” or something else, but the basic concept is already widely understood in other contexts, so we ought to make that connection!
Although the current lack of SRO’s is concerning, in my opinion the major issue in today’s homelessness crisis is not the lack of housing. It's the refusal of society to say no. No, you can't camp in this city. No, you can't shit in the streets. No, you can't panhandle aggressively. No, you can't shoot up publicly and leave your used needles lying around. The fact that we are not going to allow you to destroy our city by doing these things is not our problem. It's your problem. You can solve your problem by not doing drugs, getting help for your mental problems, getting a job, and sharing rent with others so inclined until you can afford a place of your own, probably in a lower cost community. This is not going to happen because the people we have elected allow the homeless to wallow in their victimhood rather than accept personal responsibility for their self destructiveness. What specific steps should be taken by cities to deal with the problem? Cities should use all existing shelters and further provide simple shelter space with surplus military tents with mess and recreational tents, a medical tent and restroom and shower facilities (the way I lived in the army) on leased or purchased unused commercial or industrial sites on the outskirts of the city. As many who want to and are able to work should be hired to help feed others and to maintain the facilities. Individuals could use surplus military squad tents or their own for sleeping. When those facilities are available the city should send in crews to clean up existing encampments, without arresting anyone who does not physically resist. Custodial care should be mandatory for those who are so mentally or drug addicted that they cannot care for themselves. As noted in the article we did a huge disservice to the mentally ill when we closed rather than reform our state mental hospitals. We need them back. This approach actually would cost far less and be far more effective than the current housing first attempts to fix the problem. Most of the homeless today are not the same people that populated the SRO’s of the last century and lack the capacity to live unassisted in modern society but that is not an excuse to destroy our beautiful cities and drive out our productive citizens.
Hi Dave, thanks for the comments. I’m sympathetic to a lot of this, and have written about the failures of homelessness policy here: https://www.ryanpuzycki.com/p/were-all-experiencing-homelessness
I’d be curious if any of that resonates.
Ryan: You certainly have more knowledge of the problem than I do but I just don’t think the Houston approach is widely applicable. I didn’t vote for Trump but perhaps something that Andrew Sullivan recently said indicates his approval of the administration’s get tough approach. Andrew recently returned to his neighborhood in D.C. after his annual summer on the Cape. He immediately noticed that in walking around he felt safer than before because there were fewer crazy people coming up to him. He credited the change to Trump’s intervention in how the city was policed. My uninformed suggestion simply moves the problem to the outskirts of the affected communities with the intent of giving the remaining productive residents a chance to enjoy the peace of mind that Andrew has so welcomed.
Hi Dave: I don't know if Houston's success is replicable; but it's notable that it's a different approach that has made a big difference there—it's at least worth studying! I agree that we should not tolerate flagrant disorder in public spaces; I think it's bad for regular people going about their lives, bad for cities, and bad for the people causing the disorder. But as we've seen in Austin, merely banning camping did not end homelessness; it just, as you suggest, moved them further out—to the consternation of the people who live in those parts of town.
This is a complex issue building on 50 years of bad policy, and there are no quick fixes. Housing is a big part of the solution, but so is drug and mental health policy. I think we're likely to make policy mistakes if we only focus on what we see in our immediate neighborhoods, and not look at the problem regionally. I'm glad Andrew and other residents of DC feel safer—that should be the goal we aspire to for our cities!—but I suspect somebody else in town is feeling the brunt of it.
Great article. Another part of this story is how backlash to small, low-end, unsubsidized housing is still potent in contemporary politics.
Seattle had quite a big boom in micro-housing in the early 2010s, but strong NIMBY backlash and concerns about livability drove a series of zoning and building code changes to close the “loopholes” builders were using. These steadily made the ~175 sf micro-apartments (which penciled at $900/month) illegal to build, and pushed the practical minimum up to 250-300 sf (penciling at $1200-1400).
David Neiman wrote a good article in Sightline about this: https://www.sightline.org/2016/09/06/how-seattle-killed-micro-housing/
Thanks, Jesse! The concerns about livability are just so rich. It might not be my preference, but I’m sure it beats life on the streets! Too bad about Seattle’s experience—are you working on fixing it? 😉
Many of the Y rooms in the oldest still standing YMCAs in the country still exist around Boston. They are all integrated into various low income housing/homeless services programs. Some are general subsidized extremely low income, some are transitional or permanent housing for homeless individuals and some are now family emergency shelter rooms. I think the organization switched focus to families sometime in mid century, some ymcas operate family shelter/housing but none that I know of operate their own programs for homeless individuals.
Thanks for sharing this! The last good stat I could find was from 2004, and then only local news stories about closures since then. The Y’s website and financial statements don’t seem to have any data about housing units, either. I’d love to know the current stats!
Very interesting and well written. As someone who lives in a studio apartment in a cooperative apartment building, that was originally a hotel. i am more in favor of studios--if the volume of empty office building space allows it. SROs should be secure, of course. In any case, a lot more public money has to be spent on building and maintaining housing.
Thank you, Jonathan! I've lived in an efficiency apartment in Tokyo and an extended stay in suburban SoCal for work assignments—smaller than studios, more amenitized than SROs—but they were functional and what I needed at my price point. But that last part is key: while I'm sure most people would prefer the most space/amenities they can get for their dollars, in most places the SRO option just doesn't exist at any price point. We should make it possible for as many options to exist at various prices points and preferences in our cities, and then let people decide. Because of the history, though, you're right: it will take public money.
Thank you for taking the time to read and reply to my comments as I imagine you can get a lot of responses. I realized afterward that a lot of these SROS were in neighborhoods that became desirable--I know that is probably an obvious observation, but one leading to the question of managing gentrification, if that is at all possible. Thank you.
I really appreciate the comments—in fact, I wish more people would engage. So thanks!
You’re right: gentrification certainly played a role. While a lot of that is a natural part of the economic life cycle of neighborhoods, places like NYC had policies and tax abatements that explicitly targeted SROs for redevelopment, rapidly accelerating what might have been a slower process. The bans on new SROs, plus density restrictions in cheaper neighborhoods, meant that new supply could not naturally emerge where it might otherwise. The destruction of SROs was certainly a multi-causal phenomenon, but policy choices played a major part.
Excellent article. I’ve long felt that the loss of low-cost residential hotels has made the homeless crisis worse. In the early 1980s there were old residential hotels on the same downtown Sacramento, CA block as the bus station. Few homeless in the streets. The whole area has been redeveloped and the bus station is no longer downtown. But tenants similar to the ones formerly using the SRO hotels are still with us; just on the street now.
Thank you, Carrie! Yes—SROs and transit were mutually supportive of each other. It’s a shame.
I like this idea. The problem is that, as a resident of DC, I don’t want to live or work anywhere near a building like this. I’m not alone in this sentiment. If we don’t bring back some form of institutional care for whatever portion of the current unsheltered population that isn’t well enough to care for themselves, new buildings like these will be exactly what the progressive reformers claimed they would be.
Hi Cam, thanks for the comment. For our existing population of chronically homeless people, SROs themselves would not necessarily be the right option. Permanent supportive housing or institutional care is probably more sensible. The goal in re-legalizing SROs would be to restore the bottom rung of the housing market as a *preventative* measure, to help lower-income people from ever entering into homelessness in the first place. The problem is a lot more manageable when it's just a housing affordability issue; once somebody enters homelessness, it becomes increasingly likely that it will become a mental illness or substance abuse issue, too—and then it's much harder, and more expensive, to solve.
Yeah that makes sense. Have lots of (mostly male) friends who would have found buildings like this helpful when they first moved to a city. Would help people make connections when they move to a new city as well.
The people living in these places were policed very stringently. If you didn't pay you were kicked out. Drugs were not allowed. Bringing back women was not allowed. Many were run by the YMCA which stands for Young Men CHRISTIAN Association
Fair enough - I am supportive of it with that caveat. I somehow doubt that cities would have the stomach for that kind of morality policing
I get it. the liberal cities definitely wouldn't due to fair housing etc. But I'm sure some cities with will power can find ways to get it done.
Thanks for talking about this! I have lots of opinions about housing but the one currently rolling around in my brain is that while we need new housing in many places, we also need diverse housing as well. Apartments of various sizes, co-living/houseshare situations, SFH, and yes, affordable SROs too. Housing cost and homelessness are complex problems that cannot be solved with a band aid like BMR programs.
Thanks, Tina! You are spot on—we need all of the above!
YMCA - Young Men’s Christian Association. Need I say more?
Many SRO buildings were single-sex and run by charitable organizations that were staffed by Christians of various denominations.
Non-discrimination laws destroyed the YMCA and other similar organizations like it. The free market is simply not as pro-social as people were in the past.
Part of the reason why we don't have such housing anymore is that we are no longer Christian and charitable. I'm not suggesting we need to get religion again, but something has definitely been lost.
But this kind of housing is not going to work in modern America, regardless of available former office space, unless we're clear about a few things.
The housing has to be profitable, including paying the salaries for a desk clerk, a social worker, and a bouncer. The clerk is there to manage access and determine when either of the two services are required. The social worker is there to deal with soft problems with the objective of making the place livable for residents who are not disruptive. The bouncer is there for hard problems, like psychotics off their meds, that require quick and efficient violence.
Both the social worker and the bouncer have to accommodate each other for things to work. The social worker can't try to stop the bouncer from restraining someone because some medical intervention is coming hours from now, and they can't charge the bouncer with assault, unless they're abusive beyond the needs of the situation.
Everything I've said above is possible if we quietly overlook a few laws and the police go along. But no CEO and their right mind would want to invest in such a situation, and no real world social worker would acknowledge the need for a bouncer.
Very thought-provoking. I have experienced homelessness and navigated it but I had resources. My job offer was rescinded after September 2001. I became familiar with the NYC flop house reviews online. There were only half a dozen. It crushed my soul looking at one. My knowledge of old "NY on $100 a day" books led me to American Hotel, a dorm-style still at $360/week. Like many other single adults, I found an illegal room share out in Taxistan. My two buddies lived in illegal basement conversions at one point. For that type you need a lease--impossible when life is uncertain. I only spent one night on the street (subway actually, you can ride a long way) but there are few options when you've exhausted your welcome on other people's couches.
"This arrangement for housing the down-and-out works if the manager can throw a misbehaving tenant out instantly. Otherwise, one bad apple spoils the barrel.
Under modern landlord-tenant law (in CA, at least), throwing a misbehaving tenant out takes months and costs four or five figures, which makes operating an SRO safely & profitably extremely difficult (viz. the troubles besetting the SRO Housing Corp. in LA).
(Note that this same dynamic makes operating co-living very difficult, which is why we have been hired to transition at least one one large co-living asset to conventional rentals, with more possibly on the way.)"
https://xcancel.com/moseskagan/status/1990099906686792170#m
Hi Ebenezer, check out my follow-up piece addressing this issue: https://www.ryanpuzycki.com/p/no-place-to-call-home