As noted previously, this site aims to put together information to help and encourage people to develop SROs in two formats: As both supportive housing and market-rate housing.
I would like to see a return of SROs as a normal housing option for ordinary people. They currently have a reputation of being "homes for the homeless," if people know what they are at all. (I routinely include a link to a Wikipedia article defining SROs when talking in online forums because people often have no idea what I am talking about.)
But the reality is that the US is in crisis right now and we can't wait for some "perfect" world with perfect solutions. Some people just need a solution right now that gets them off the street and keeps them off the street.
Those people need supportive housing -- a charitable model that aims to take care of them to some degree rather than a model that just aims to supply housing at a low enough cost, in the right places and with the right amenities for it to make sense for ordinary people of limited means.
If done right, some of these residents may eventually get their act together and move out, especially if market-based SROs also get developed and become a standard part of the available housing stock again.
Decades before Air BnB was a thing, wealthy people were buying up cheap houses in small coastal towns to use as vacation homes and destroying quality of life for the locals. Locals got priced out of the local housing market by people who only lived there part time, often just a few weekends a year in essence and maybe part of the summer.
This trend has gotten dramatically worse in recent years and is generally framed as a war between the rich and the poor, but the reality is that "rich" is relative and it has long been the case that some people could afford a second residence in some cheap place off the beaten path due to exchange rates and what not. It is perhaps more accurately framed as a war between settled locals and mobile peoples.
Settled peoples and mobile peoples have long had friction in human history and I am inclined to be sympathetic to the mobile peoples, regardless of income, because I'm a former military wife. Moving around was part of the deal with that life.
We currently have a world that gives high fives and lots of empowerment to mobile peoples with enough money and frowns upon mobile peoples who aren't monied and we increasingly throw our hands in the air and give up on trying to protect settled locals from being run roughshod over by these trends.
Ideally, I do not wish to use low-income level as a criterion for the market-rate SROs. Instead, some percentage of the units should be set aside for people for whom this is their primary residence.
I am perfectly happy to let some units be rented by upper class people who find these buildings good enough for them and cheap enough to make a sensible alternative to a hotel and who wish to have a weekend place near the beach or what have you. I think letting some of the units be rented to people looking to live there part-time has a lot of good points, but I do not wish the entire building to be rented out to upper class vacationers who have discovered a wonderful cheap alternative to local hotels.
This idea will need to be fleshed out further and I need to do additional research. I have a number of half-baked ideas on the back burner related to this and defining who qualifies as calling this their primary residence will need to also be worked out.
I would like to see a return of SROs as a normal housing option for ordinary people. They currently have a reputation of being "homes for the homeless," if people know what they are at all. (I routinely include a link to a Wikipedia article defining SROs when talking in online forums because people often have no idea what I am talking about.)
But the reality is that the US is in crisis right now and we can't wait for some "perfect" world with perfect solutions. Some people just need a solution right now that gets them off the street and keeps them off the street.
Those people need supportive housing -- a charitable model that aims to take care of them to some degree rather than a model that just aims to supply housing at a low enough cost, in the right places and with the right amenities for it to make sense for ordinary people of limited means.
Supportive Housing
We can borrow criteria from existing supportive housing to help flesh out this idea, such as:- People experiencing homelessness
- Low-income seniors
- Youth aging out of foster care
If done right, some of these residents may eventually get their act together and move out, especially if market-based SROs also get developed and become a standard part of the available housing stock again.
Market-Rate Housing
Currently, most SROs are poverty housing. If they aren't part of a program to help the homeless, they are typically in an old building, in a bad part of town and in such poor condition that middle class or upper class people wouldn't want to live there.Decades before Air BnB was a thing, wealthy people were buying up cheap houses in small coastal towns to use as vacation homes and destroying quality of life for the locals. Locals got priced out of the local housing market by people who only lived there part time, often just a few weekends a year in essence and maybe part of the summer.
This trend has gotten dramatically worse in recent years and is generally framed as a war between the rich and the poor, but the reality is that "rich" is relative and it has long been the case that some people could afford a second residence in some cheap place off the beaten path due to exchange rates and what not. It is perhaps more accurately framed as a war between settled locals and mobile peoples.
Settled peoples and mobile peoples have long had friction in human history and I am inclined to be sympathetic to the mobile peoples, regardless of income, because I'm a former military wife. Moving around was part of the deal with that life.
We currently have a world that gives high fives and lots of empowerment to mobile peoples with enough money and frowns upon mobile peoples who aren't monied and we increasingly throw our hands in the air and give up on trying to protect settled locals from being run roughshod over by these trends.
Ideally, I do not wish to use low-income level as a criterion for the market-rate SROs. Instead, some percentage of the units should be set aside for people for whom this is their primary residence.
I am perfectly happy to let some units be rented by upper class people who find these buildings good enough for them and cheap enough to make a sensible alternative to a hotel and who wish to have a weekend place near the beach or what have you. I think letting some of the units be rented to people looking to live there part-time has a lot of good points, but I do not wish the entire building to be rented out to upper class vacationers who have discovered a wonderful cheap alternative to local hotels.
This idea will need to be fleshed out further and I need to do additional research. I have a number of half-baked ideas on the back burner related to this and defining who qualifies as calling this their primary residence will need to also be worked out.