Single Room Occupancy (SRO) Hotels- SWEET and SOUR

by Thornton Kimes/PNN Poverty Scholar in residence

From 1995 to 1999 I lived in the Curtis Hotel, a Single Room Occupancy building on Valencia Street between 16th and 17th Streets in San Francisco’s Mission District. A friend, call him Joe the Bummed-Out Tenant (J.BOT? Joe-BOT? Just Joe? I dunno…), lived and worked there as a desk clerk for 14 years before quitting, experiencing houselessness for 9 months and moving into a Tenderloin Housing Clinic (THC) SRO, the Vincent—the same year I moved into the Elk Hotel, a few blocks away, in March of 2004.

We reconnected recently at the Wednesday weekly free food pantry at the Elk, and remembered those years. Anyone with SRO experience can tell Hollywood-worthy social injustice horror stories, among other tales, and the Curtis surely was one—though it isn’t the main focus here.

To illustrate, an absurdity: She Who Must Be Obeyed, also known as the manager of the Curtis, often tried to stop our Seinfeldian conversations about nothing (or books), even when Joe-bot didn’t have anything to do other than read. Since I was well past the then-current you-haven’t-been-here-more-than-30-days…GET OUT! SRO regime, I politely resisted her “isolate the employee” campaign.

The Curtis had toxic management, bad electrical wiring, self-destructing tenants—Joe-bot and I saw one set fire to his own sink one evening, through an office window sharing an air-well during a conversation about nothing—and The Loud Construction Noises Of The Restaurant Appearing Under Our Noses that eventually contributed to my vanishing act from the place.

Joe-bot and I have been relatively comfortable with the management of our SRO homes, but the only thing that lasts is change. The Elk, like the Curtis and other SRO’s, has been a place where a Patel family from India could get a foothold in the mythology of the American Dream of Success. She Who Must Be Obeyed enjoyed her power over tenants who had none—unless they had done a lot of time in their hotel room—a little too much.

Harry Patel, now the ex-manager of the Elk, is a good man who made as much lemonade as he could from what harvest was available. That phrase “ex-manager” is important.

One of Joe-bot’s friends told me, one Wednesday, he wanted to sue THC. Musing on sueing is apparently a long-standing hobby, but after talking with Joe-bot I understood and sympathized. Until January of 2008, the Vincent (the building isn’t named, the sign outside just says “Hotel”) was a somewhat stable place to hang your hat.

From January through October, Joe said many people, including THC Director of Property Management James Holland, played the roles of Manager, Assistant Manager, or Acting Manager (a modern update on Musical Chairs—Musical Managers…). He named 14 of them, including at least one desk clerk, and one who voluntarily reduced himself in status to same, from the Boyd and Jefferson Hotels—and the assistant manager of the Elk, who hopes to be named Manager Manager there.

I hope the Elk Hotel does not go through the same chaotic game of Musical Managers the Vincent has enjoyed.

Joe-bot also said the Vincent, which acts as host to THC administrative staff in its basement, has become a noiser, more chaotic, less safe living environment with almost daily fights between tenants happening. October 2008 was an interesting month.

The television room in the lobby was stripped—no tv, chairs, or tables, and the common-use microwave was relocated under a fire alarm closer to tenant rooms. The inevitable result of microwaving bags of popcorn: the Fire Department visited the hotel 3 days in a row for microwave popcorn false alarms (my acquaintance at the SRO Collaborative knew about those incidents), plus an unrelated visit the next day for a bonus.

“The desk clerks don’t know how to deal with fire alarms, accidental or real,” Joe-bot told me, “they don’t know what to do or who to call when the alarm goes off.”

March 2009 will mark my fifth year living in the Elk Hotel, but THC only counts the years since they started managing the place. I’d really be upset if my tenure at the Elk was 10 years or more—was I living with imaginary friends?

When THC moved in, the Elk got spiffed up--new carpets, reinforced assault-proof (but not bullet proof) work hut for the desk clerks, and other improvements. They spent some money, but not nearly enough, and they didn’t focus on what I’d like to call my The Way Things Ought To Be List For SRO Hotels.

I briefly lived in the All-Star Hotel (16th and Folsom Streets), now a THC building (much to my surprise) several times. The All-Star has a community kitchen on each floor. The only other place like that I’ve ever seen is the very very clean SRO hotel The Arlington Residence, on Ellis and Leavenworth, run by The St. Vincent de Paul Society; the Arlington is for substance abusers in recovery; in 1995, my case manager at the shelter now called Next Door Shelter, thought I was a good fit since I don’t abuse substances (except food…).

SRO tenants can’t cook in their rooms. Too small a space, too easy to start a fire. Coffeemakers, Crock pots and microwaves are cool, but hot plates, toasters, rotisserie thinguses—nope, nah, nada, no way. I use my coffeemaker for coffee, tea, or me—that is, the hot water does the job for turning Top Ramen noodles and other things into a meal.

Top Ramen is, of course, a rite of passage many Americans most likely recall from their “salad days” (when salad was all they could afford living in their first home away from home—read William Shatner’s autobiography, before he became Captain Kirk he was a starving actor in Canada. If any Trekkers want his autograph, don’t say the word “salad” to him), but it is a staple on my diet now.

Community kitchens are on the top of my The Way Things Ought To Be List. A Laundry Room is snuggled up close, the second item. I lived next door to the one washer, one dryer laundry room at the Curtis, and paid less rent because the manager thought it was a hardship for me. It wasn’t, and the rent wasn’t either.

A Curtis Special, one washer/one dryer, would be a step up for many SRO tenants, including those with disabilities that restrict their movements. One of the tenants at the Elk is often unable to leave her room due to chronic pain problems. I know her as “Star”. Community kitchens and laundry rooms would require a sacrifice—the willingness to give up rooms that would house tenants and make money for the SRO’s management.

The digital television conversion those of us who care about television are all going through, the low-income coupons-to-buy-the-digital-signal-converter-boxes program, are not the only limbo SRO tenants experience daily. Even before the digital television thing started looming larger on the horizon, SRO hotels have been in a grey area for television service, cable and satellite in particular.

Some THC building are very cable friendly, Elk residents went through a very confusing process leading to the establishment of a community satellite television in the lobby. Satellite tv is cool, as long as the bills are paid. Ahem, cough cough.

Of course, if you aren’t low-income (you probably don’t live in a SRO—unless even “affordable housing” hoses you), more personal money certainly talks pretty loudly. Still, a television in every room, a chicken in every pot…actually, I am serious about that. This is one of those “I’d rather Opt Out Than Be Made To Seek The Service I Should Automatically Have” situations.

Another one is telephones. Put the low-income Lifeline phones in every SRO room, put the phone bill on the monthly (or every 2 weeks, the way I paid until achieving downward mobility this past summer to welfare) rent payment so nobody has to think about it unless someone at the phone company does something “unfortunate”. Simple. The Way Things Ought To Be.

SRO tenants in San Francisco have traveled some ways since The Bad Old Days, but there’s some distance to go to be living in The Promised Land. Organizations like Tenderloin Neighborhood Development Corporation, CoHousing Partners, and THC provide significant steps up the Ladder of Liveability, but SRO hotel managers and owners still have to be pushed and prodded, often by tenants working for the SRO Collaborative, POWER and other groups.

Next on my The Way Things Ought To Be list: showers and bathrooms. The best showers I’ve ever taken were in the county jail in Great Falls, Montana after cutting the fence around a missile silo outside of town.

Many SRO tenants use shared bathrooms, showers, and bathtubs. The Elk’s showers are all different in size, equipment, and water pressure. I spent long minutes in the county jail shower. Global warming? Me was bad boy. As I said, THC spent a lot of money on improvements for the Elk, but not much on the showers except for the frequent repairs that are the inevitable consequence of 80+ people living in the building.

One problem, a leak, required a Sherlock Holmesian effort to trace the path the water took to the mom and pop store under us. It also shut down my floor’s shower for several weeks.

Another problem, which may have been solved (I’m crossing my fingers…) is the Elk Hotel’s heating system, which turned on full blast during the hottest days of the summer and, after much complaining, didn’t come on much, if at all, as the season turned especially during the recent Bay Area deep freeze. Verbal complaints didn’t get much more than responses like “That’s a maintenance thing”.

I’ve never experienced anything like this in an SRO hotel before. How many tenants are too used to this? It was nice to learn that the Rent Board would have reduced my rent if I filed a complaint—all I want is an environmental control system that hasn’t lost its mechanical little mind!

A written request from a number of tenants, organized by the tenant rep, appears to have gotten results. We’ll see. I do like cooler weather, despite growing up in Texas, but I’m not a member of the Polar Bear Club that swims in the cold waters of San Francisco Bay!

THC and other non-profit-entity-run SRO hotels (including the Arlington) have on-site case managers available for low-income tenants who need help gaining access to social services and other things. Joe The Bummed Out Tenant and others I’ve spoken to at the Wednesday food pantry almost universally say said case managers are rarely available and there isn’t much they can do for them anyway—the assistance available is (well-known to those of us who’ve been around the social services block a few times) a trickled-down limited supply sought by a heapin’ helpin’ of people in need. That limited supply of help is under harsh attack in the Filthy McNasty economic conditions we’re living in now.

One more thing for the Way Things Ought To Be List: honesty. Tell folks there isn’t anything new available if they already know the ropes, maybe do the same anyway for the new kids on the block.

How did I find out the All-Star Hotel, which I thought was run by the City of San Francisco, is a THC building? Nate Holmes, shop steward of the union representing THC workers, told me. Nate’s an interesting guy, seems to know everyone, from SRO Collaborative tenant reps to someone from the San Francisco Organizing Project to Tony Robles and Tiny from Poor Magazine to who knows whom else.

I met him at what used to be Wild Awakenings Café, but is now the…Celtic Coffee Company. I’d love to have the old name back, but never mind. Nate Holmes is the best kind of shop steward (I’ve known one other, a single father of three I used to know in Seattle who worked for the postal service), the kind that gets in trouble with management for doing what a good union dude is supposed to do.

He is a caring, and very practical, pragmatic man. He told me, among other things, to do whatever it takes to get out of the Elk and into better housing. “I’ve seen too many people die in SRO’s,” he said. He’s happy to see Barack Obama be the next President, but realistic about the fact that there still is and always will be a lot to do to before conditions improve to (in my words) The Way Things Ought To Be.

Holmes also said “THC can do more to help tenants on GA find work—or create that work; they were trying to do more but they stopped for no apparent reason.” A six-months-long desk clerk training program that kicks the trainee to the curb to find another job elsewhere isn’t enough in his opinion. THC could get more people off of welfare, but only if, Holmes counseled me—tenants combine forces with the SRO Collaborative tenant rep organizaers to fight for more simple, practical mass employment, to push THC and encourage the San Francisco Board of Supervisors to add their voices and influence to such an effort.

“THC says there’s no money for it,” Holmes continued, “but they had it to start with” and just stopped spending it on that task.

Okay. Practical solutions versus semi-hemi-demi-pie-in-the-sky something-from-somewhere impractical (maybe) stuff. I have a very hard time disagreeing with Nate Holmes, but for one humongous obstacle in the way: “affordable housing” and its cousins, “low-income” and “very low-income” housing—there ain’t enough and there will be much less of it if San Francisco’s schizoid city planning process, married to the even worse “10 Year Plan To End Homelessness” (a.k.a. Care Not Cash), is allowed to continue making what amounts to fetal alcohol syndrome/crack baby-style urban policy.

Practical solutions working to end under and unemployment and houselessness will get nowhere if City Hall not only doesn’t know what its right and left hands are doing—it doesn’t act like it wants to know!

Wendall Davis is the assistant manager of the Elk Hotel, a known product to his employers and still has to go through a multiple interview interview process to get hired as the Manager Manager. Wendall is pretty popular, a nice guy too—you’d think THC would notice how the San Francisco 49ers got a clue and hired Mike Singletary to be Head Coach after proving he’s Da Man and a good leader too.

During a December 29th tenant meeting at the Elk, in response to conversation about kitchens, laundry rooms, etc., Wendall commented: “THC put in new carpets and other stuff before taking over officially, but washers, dryers and kitchens are major improvements that would increase the value of the building and if THC did that where would we be at the end of the 10 year contract with Mr. Patel, the owner? Ass out!”

The Catch-22-ish rock and hard place here is absotutely amazing, fascinating, frustrating, insert-your-own word for it (but don’t say it in front of the kids unless they’re used to it…). The economy is part of this madness too, I totally understand, though everyone hopes things improve.

THC’s contract with SRO owners is slightly long-viewish, but where’s the beef? Wendall was answering a comment/question from me about THC being a non-profit in good standing (I hope) with other non-profits like St. Anthony Foundation, Catholic Charities, St. Vincent de Paul and others that help tenants move from shelters to SRO’s or apartments, securing appliances and furniture.

I would have thought that the non-profit attitude would be more it’s-the-right-thing-to-do, so-why-not-do-it-no-matter-what-happens-at-the-end-of-the-contract. THC and other non-profits are a buffer zone between low-income citizens and the streets, near-total destitution and worse. Should I be impressed?

Another addition to The Way Things Ought To Be List: An “SRO Project”. Is there anyone out there who could or would accept the challenge of doing what ATHC and others apparently won’t do? Find and/or spend money, organize volunteers and tenant sweat equity—á la Habitat For Humanity—turning them into improvements to SRO hotels just becuz this Do The Right Thing is the rightest thing to do? (This is one of the main goals of POOR Magazine’s HOMEFULNESS project –still un-funded)

Every few years I do on-line searches of Habitat, Americorps and Vista. What stops me from seriously going after positions in those organizations—and others that they support—is a combinatikon of feeling personally inadequate to the tasks at hand and being unwilling to be philosophically crammed between some very hard rocks ‘n hard places of built-in hostile Care Not Cash attitudes of some of those efforts.

One position I examined on December 30th, 2008, is located in Sacramento. It’s a “10 Year Plan To End Homelessness” schtick, like the thing Gavin Newsome allowed to follow him home one day and has been trying to sell San Franciscans on its cuteness ever since.

HELP WANTED! I’ll beat down my self-doubts if there’s a Fairy Godmother/father out there. I need a job. I also want to do something that makes sense, that means something, even if a little head-banging on stone walls is the order of the day. I’ve always wanted to find out how good San Francisco Renaissance (the non-profit that teaches folks small business basics and incubates many that have become, or will become, players in the small business universe in this city) is, or whatever training regimen makes sense to actually be capable of doing what I’d like to do.

Practical versus impractical, that is the question. When it comes to SRO hotels, I think the answer should be—make those places as good as they can be for folks who need them. They, and others like them, will need them for a good long while to come.

It is personally rather frightening how easy it would be for me to become one of those people Nate Holmes spoke of (the dead ones)—an SRO hotel hermit. Despite what I said about in-house SRO case managers, I’ve watched at least one good one in action: Beth Sadler, the Elk Hotel’s c.m., spent some serious time talking through a crack in the door of one hotel hermit one day (I was in the bathroom across the hall—fly on the, uh, wall…).

Practical versus impractical, that is the question. Is there an answer?