Single-Room Occupancy Housing

SRO Housing and Special Needs Populations

In the past, SRO housing has served as an inexpensive alternative for individuals, mostly men, who, but for the availability of a cheap room to rent, would be living on the street. Residential hotels, rooming houses, and so-called flophouses were prevalent in high-density, low-rent areas of the nation's big cities. Notwithstanding the shadier reputation of SRO housing, early 20th-century immigrants and people seeking employment opportunities in urban centers found the simple accommodations offered by SRO housing to be an acceptable place to call home. A concerted effort was afoot, however, during the second half of the 20th century to rid cities of SRO housing and the clientele such housing supposedly began to attract. Concerns over drug and alcohol abuse, prostitution, and derelict behavior and circumstances in SRO housing were some of the alleged reasons driving the desire of local governments to clean up urban areas saturated with this type of housing. More to the point, however, was the claim that SRO housing had a negative economic impact [Page 678]on the sustainability of central business districts. Downtown revitalization, urban renewal, and community development programs implemented to rid cities of blight and substandard housing conditions were collectively viewed as the panacea to revive slumping central cities. Nonetheless, these revitalization efforts contributed to the drastic reduction of SRO housing units in the urban core. The loss of SRO housing units during the 1970s and 1980s has been estimated to be in excess of a million units. New York City alone saw the elimination of 160,000 SRO units. The downside of the central city revitalization movement was the loss of affordable housing for low-income individuals and others who depended on SRO housing.

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