There is an invisible population of homeless people living in San Francisco — families living in Single Room Occupancy hotels. Over 450 families are estimated to be currently living in SRO hotel rooms, mostly in the Tenderloin, Mission, South of Market and Chinatown.

The conditions in which these families live are, to say the least, appalling. Imagine a family of five living in a cramped and stuffy 8’x10’ room, with a mildewed bathroom down the hall that’s shared by 30 strangers, and you have to clean up drug paraphernalia before you can give the kids a bath. Now picture lead-tainted paint chipping onto a 10-year-old stained and musty carpet that is the only place for the children to play. Most SRO hotels do not have refrigerators, cooking facilities, or proper storage areas for food forcing many families to spend extra money on eating out because the soup kitchens are closed by the time the parents get home from work. Now imagine that the rent for these accommodations is between $250 and $500 a week. Well that’s the reality for far too many families in this city. NO ONE should have to live like this — especially children.

Last year the Mission SRO Collaborative and the Chinatown SRO Collaborative both started noticing more and more families with children showing up in SRO hotels. This was thought to be a direct result of the housing crisis that San Francisco has been experiencing. They decided to form the Families in SROs Collaborative, a joint effort of eight different community based organizations including the Mission Housing Development Corporation, Coalition on Homelessness, Chinatown Community Development Center, Mission Agenda, Chinese Progressive Association, Homeless Prenatal Program, Community Tenants Association and St. Peter’s Housing Committee. With funding from the Department of Public Health, they worked together to conduct a census to calculate the number of families living in San Francisco’s SROs, and to do direct outreach to these families to determine their predominant socio-economic backgrounds and identify problems that arise for families as a result of living in SRO hotels.

Utilizing a small staff of census workers, the Families in SROs Collaborative went from hotel to hotel, door to door trying to track down this invisible population. Many obstacles stood in the way of this large undertaking, including uncooperative hotel managers and families that simply don’t want to be counted for a variety of reasons including want of privacy, fear of being reported to Child Protective Services, legal issues, and immigration status. But the workers persevered and on October 23, 2002 the Families in SROs Collaborative released the report on the census of families in SROs outlining the findings of the census.

SUMMARY OF FINDINGS:

• Over 40% of all San Francisco SROs have at least one child living in them.
• Over 450 families and over 760 children were found to be living in San Francisco SROs.
• The majority reside in Chinatown (62%), followed by the Tenderloin (13%), Mission (11%), South of Market (4%), and Other Parts of San Francisco (11%).
• The average SRO family consists of 3.4 people and has lived in their 10’ x 10’ room without a kitchen or bathroom for over 4 years.
• Two out of three families have more than one adult. Three out of four of these adults are employed, and still families cannot afford to move out.
• The majority of SRO families (approximately 85%) are immigrants of color whose first language is not English.
• After rent and food costs, the average family has $290 in their pockets to make ends meet with averages as low as $63 in the Mission and $37 in the Tenderloin.
• In the Tenderloin and SOMA many families cycle between SROs and homelessness.
• Half the parents reported that living in a SRO had caused health problems for them and their children.
• Eighty percent of children in SROs are between the ages of newborn and twelve, with many having spent their entire lives there.
• Almost all families report that insufficient income and the lack of affordable housing keep them from moving into better housing.
• Families in SROs often do not know about, and lack access to, public services.

After identifying the issues families face, the Families in SROs Collaborative began to do more extensive outreach in March of this year. The main goals of the outreach project are to assess the primary needs of the families, inform them of services that are available, and provide referrals to other agencies that can help. Other goals are to provide advocacy services to the families when they are facing violations of their rights and to try and bring the families together as a community in order to channel their collective energies to improve the conditions of families in SROs as a whole, and to advocate for more affordable housing for families in San Francisco.

Difficulties abound for the peer outreach workers who must first locate the hard to find, and then gain the trust of families who are often scared and apprehensive. The families are often isolated and fearful of entering the system that has so often ignored and betrayed them. In spite of these difficulties, the outreach workers persevered.

While addressing the needs of the families it was realized that not only was there a need to get increased services, but also to protect and preserve existing services.

Therefore, in June of this year the Families in SROs Collaborative, with input from the families they serve, decided to direct a letter writing campaign to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.

The focus of the campaign was to demand that the Supervisors oppose the budget cuts to programs that would adversely affect low-income families. On June 26th, the day of the budget hearings at City Hall, the Families in SROs Collaborative delivered hundreds of letters signed by families living in SROs in hopes of influencing the final decision on the budget in the end of July. Some of these programs have been added back and the Collaborative will continue to advocate for those programs that have not yet been salvaged.

During this same period the SRO Task Force, established by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors made policy recommendations in areas of concern that impact SROs. One of the recommendations they made was a change to San Francisco’s Definition of Homelessness to include families with children who stay in Single Room Occupancy hotels, regardless of their tenancy rights. The Board of Supervisors and the Mayor approved the new Definition of Homelessness in December of 2001. This opened up a new group of services available to these families that previously were only available to those who were homeless on the street or in shelters.

Most of the families living in SROs are unaware that these services exist or that they are eligible for them, which is why the Families in SROs Collaborative is so significant. The outreach is necessary to provide information to the families about services available to them. In addition, through outreach families are also educated about the legislative and policy process giving them the opportunity to participate and be represented in the political arena. The Families in SROs Collaborative is instrumental in creating a voice for families who would otherwise exist in silence.

Unfortunately, the Department of Public Health’s temporary funding for the project came to an end in June and more funding has yet to be approved for the current fiscal year. An extensive search for more funding from a private source or foundation is currently underway. In the meantime, the staff of the Families in SROs Collaborative will continue to work and hope that a financial backer is found soon.

Starr

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 1st, 2002 at 12:07 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.