What It’s Like Living in an SRO, the Cornerstone of SF’s Affordable Housing Stock

For a long, intimate look at a significant part of San Francisco, a new documentary is essential viewing. <a href="https://www.homeisahotel.com/" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">Home Is a Hotel</a>, which screened last week at the Roxie Theater, started as a 12-minute, <a href="https://vimeo.com/151312143" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">black-and-white short</a>, and now filmmakers Kevin D. Wong, Kar Yin Tham, and Todd Sills have expanded it to a colorized feature film. The doc goes inside the city’s single-room-occupancy hotels, known as SROs, the crucial form of housing for low-income residents, seniors, and people moving out of homelessness. SROs were originally <a href="https://ccsroc.net/s-r-o-hotels-in-san-francisco/" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">mainstay housing for immigrants</a> and are concentrated in the Tenderloin, Chinatown, and Inner Mission. Urban renewal 50 years ago <a href="https://thefrisc.com/sf-is-still-fighting-over-a-neighborhood-that-hasnt-existed-in-50-years-5a5fad4b33cb" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">destroyed many of them</a>, and a <a href="https://default.sfplanning.org/projects/community-stabilization/sro-hotel-protections.htm" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">1981 city law</a> has helped preserve those remaining as affordable housing. <a href="https://thefrisc.com/what-its-like-living-in-an-sro-the-cornerstone-of-sf-s-affordable-housing-stock-1342d190d0a0">Learn More</a>