COSTA MESA : SRO Housing for Working Poor Gains

The City Council has paved the way for the development of single-room-occupancy hotels that are being touted as one solution to a lack of affordable housing for the poor.

By issuing a negative declaration, the council decided the SROs would not have an adverse effect on the city if certain conditions are met.

The city’s new policy, drafted in response to proposals to convert a motel owned by the Resolution Trust Corp. into an SRO, requires the SRO hotels to be located near bus stops or commercial and industrial areas. It also stipulates that single rooms be at least 175 square feet.

At the council’s suggestion, any SRO development will have to include parking spaces relative to how large the units would be and whether the residents would work nearby or even own cars. The number of parking spaces would range from a minimum of 0.8 of a space per one full-sized living unit.

Single-room-occupancy hotels have been proposed in Huntington Beach and Santa Ana to provide temporary, low-cost housing for the working poor. The rooms usually contain a kitchen and bathroom, and come with a telephone, television, closet, bed, table and chairs. The rooms can be rented on a monthly, weekly or daily basis, but only 10% of a hotel’s rooms in Costa Mesa will be allowed to be rented out from day to day.

The SROs are different from low-cost motels because they must submit a management plan to be approved by the city and provide security to residents. Costa Mesa’s plan requires controlled entrances, in which only residents and their guests will be allowed on the property, and video-camera monitoring of the parking lot and common areas.

Developers who want to build SROs will have to obtain a conditional-use permit in commercial zones where hotels are already allowed or in a commercial area that has already been laid out in the city’s general plan.