Life inside a century-old SRO hotel in San Francisco's Tenderloin

San Francisco Chronicle / SFGate.com ^ | Nov. 29, 2021 | Ariana Bindman

[thecodont]

Most mornings at Polk Manor, I woke up to the sound of seagulls. Or car break-ins. Or nothing at all. Living in a single room occupancy in the Tenderloin is actually a lot more quiet than you’d think. For about three years, I lived alone in a century-old 8-by-10 hotel room above a radical feminist bookstore, a cluttered storefront that sold sequined negligees and a massage parlor called Healing Winds that never seemed to be open. Had I not, I’d probably be a completely different person.

Single room occupancies, or SROs, are maybe the last vestige of affordable housing in San Francisco. They’re converted hotel rooms that have shared bathrooms and a shared kitchen area (if you’re lucky) and typically serve low-income residents. They house about 30,000 residents in the city, and most units are in the Tenderloin, though a few are still in the Chinatown and North Beach areas. Once ubiquitous, in the 1970s, the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency nearly wiped them out. Their “slum clearance” and “blight removal” efforts robbed low-income residents of stable housing, directly contributing to the city’s ongoing homelessness crisis today.

Even though my rent was $850 a month with utilities included, I knew why most people didn’t opt for hotel living. Whenever I mentioned the shared bathroom situation, they could hardly contain their disgust. “I’m sorry, but I could never live like that,” said my co-worker who slept in a dining room with a partition made of bedsheets.

[Mathews]

All of the older ‘sweeps were. Didn’t want to set any boom-booms off dontchaknow. Testy things...

[paddles]

I’m intrigued by “Healing Winds” and what that might imply...

[SamAdams76]

What is a "feminist bookstore"?

This is how I picture it. Am I wrong?