Panel OKs Minimum Level on Number of SRO Rooms

Attempting to guarantee the continued availability of single room occupancy (SRO) hotel rooms for the city’s poor, the San Diego Housing Commission on Monday approved in principle new standards governing the demolition and conversion of the city’s residential hotels.

Under a plan advanced by Councilwoman and commission member Celia Ballesteros, hotel owners would be free to convert or demolish SRO hotels until the citywide total of SRO rooms drops to a “crisis level” of 3,400. City officials believe there are about 3,500 SRO rooms now.

Below the 3,400 level, developers would then have to replace every demolished or converted unit with a similar unit at another location or contribute to a replacement fund.

The plan needs City Council approval before it could replace the current ordinance, which requires one-for-one replacement of every SRO unit demolished or converted, a requirement that SRO owners have called a hardship. The current ordinance expires Dec. 31.

Measure Called Constructive

The new proposal drew praise from various interests concerned with SROs, many of which are clustered in the city’s 16-block Gaslamp Quarter. “I think that’s a very constructive thing they have passed. I really feel good about that,” said Dan Pearson, chairman of the Downtown Owners and Residents Assn., which represents some SRO owners.

Amy Rowland, housing consultant for the Regional Task Force on the Homeless, also called the compromise proposal acceptable. “I think that what they just adopted is more likely to be passed by the (City) Council” than is a previous plan recommended by Housing Commission staff members, she said.

Representatives of the Centre City Development Corp. and the Gaslamp Quarter Council also endorsed the plan.

Monday’s plan would replace an earlier proposal to phase out restrictions on SRO demolitions over the next 18 months, allowing the gradual demolition or conversion of 800 units without requiring owners to build new ones. Though the Planning Commission endorsed that idea, the City Council last month sent it back to the Housing Commission for review.

Complicating the new proposal is the fact that no survey of SRO units has been conducted since 1985. Based on that survey, the Housing Commission believes that there are about 3,500 of the small, sparsely furnished units, which generally rent for $200 to $300 a month.

Under the new proposal, the commission would review the vacancy rates at SROs every six months and could adjust the minimum number of units citywide if that rate is judged too high. The commission will discuss the plan again, probably in September, after staff members draft the specifics of the ordinance.