The Ellis Act, capital improvement rent increases, and owner move-in evictions have company in the race to permanently remove low-income tenants from San Francisco.  SRO hotel fires are now displacing low-income tenants at an alarming rate.  In the last eight months, five large SRO hotels have caught fire and displaced over 500 tenants from their homes.
 Many of the permanent residents in these fire-damaged hotels have not been able to find permanent housing in other hotels after they are involuntarily displaced.  With the vacancy rate hovering around 1%, there is no economic incentive for hotel owners to rent to permanent residents.  Many hotel managers are playing “musical rooms” with tenants in order to avoid granting tenancy to this population.  For example, managers are requiring tenants to leave their rooms for a day or two after renting to them for 21-28 days to circumvent the law which states that residents acquire permanent tenancy after 30 days of continuous occupancy of a unit.  As such, many tenants are forced onto the street and join the ranks of the burgeoning homeless population.  SRO managers’ practices perpetuate this cycle as they are able to rent to tenants in search of shelter on a non-permanent basis.
 The City has not come up with an adequate response to providing for SRO fire victims.  After the fires, tenants complained that they did not receive sufficient health and counseling services.  Furthermore, many tenants displaced by the fires still have not found permanent housing and are living in shelters or on the street.
 The Mission SRO Collaborative has been working with SRO residents to ensure that their housing, health, and mental needs are met.  The Collaborative consists of the St. Peter’s Housing Committee, Mission Agenda, and Mission Housing Development Corporation.  The Collaborative and a core group of fire victims have met with a number of SF Supervisors to push through legislation that would help resolve the situation.  Supervisor Ammiano is spearheading this effort and has agreed to help develop legislation that addresses a comprehensive fire prevention and response plan, as well as a housing preservation plan.  The legislation will incorporate community-based organizations’ participation since these groups are in contact with the tenants on a daily basis and will be able to more effectively formulate programs that respond to the residents’ specific needs.
 Mayor Brown has also responded to the crisis by proposing a fire prevention plan that focuses on increased SRO hotel inspections by the fire department.  This plan, however, addresses only a portion of the problem, given that fires will still happen.  For this reason, the SRO Collaborative deems this solution incomplete.  The mayor has also formed two task forces to deal with fire prevention and response.  The SRO Collaborative, other community groups, and fire victims are attending these meetings to ensure that community-based solutions are incorporated into any proposals that the two task forces might propose.  Community groups and tenants alike are extremely concerned that the mayor implemented the task forces to divert attention from the crisis at hand and water down any solutions that might lead to more meaningful change.  For this reason, the SRO Collaborative and low-income tenants continue to push forward with legislation at the Board of Supervisors that will more comprehensively deal with a housing preservation and fire prevention/response plan.
 Everyone is well aware of the severity of the housing crisis in San Francisco.  It is not uncommon for tenants to pay over $600.00 per month for a run-down SRO room without a bathroom.  Due to the rising costs of rent in the city, families with small children are now sharing these rooms.  Fires threaten to permanently displace even more tenants from their homes — people who can least afford to lose them.  As the housing stock decreases, property owners are able to charge even more for increasingly scarce vacant units.  It is now incumbent upon the City to address this problem before it gets worse.

By Matt Brown