Residential Hotels Win Panel’s Favor

Hoping to stem the growing tide of homeless people on downtown streets, a San Diego City Council committee Wednesday called for an emergency ordinance to make sure that no more residential hotels are lost to parking lots or office buildings.

The call for the emergency ordinance by the council’s Public Services and Safety Committee focuses on some of the social implications of downtown redevelopment, which has inspired new office towers and the Horton Plaza Shopping Center.

Because of escalating land values caused by redevelopment, so-called single room occupancy hotels, which house low-income workers or senior citizens on fixed incomes, have become increasingly ulnerable to the wrecking ball to make way for newer, high-rent projects.

Since 1976, 1,247 residential hotel rooms have been lost downtown because of abandonment, demolition or conversion into office space, a city Planning Department report says. San Diego Housing Commission figures show that there are now 65 residential hotels with 3,333 rooms, but the number of rooms is expected to drop another 1,000 by 1988.

The result will be more poor people out on the street, predicted Art Skolnik, executive director of the Gaslamp Quarter Council and a member of the mayor’s task force on the homeless.

“We’re causing the displacement of the weakest people in our community,” Skolnik said after the committee hearing. “These are people who have worked their whole lives, earned their pensions and Social Security checks--even though they are way out of whack with the standards today.”

Skolnik said, “The public has a responsibility--not the choice--to act to protect” those 3,000 to 5,000 people downtown who need affordable housing. He added that, while other major cities such as Seattle and San Francisco have taken steps to protect such hotels, San Diego is far behind.

At the committee meeting, council members heard appeals for help from three residents who are among those being evicted from the Park Hotel, 3359 5th Ave., which they say is scheduled for demolition to make room for a parking lot for the San Diego Blood Bank. The demolition will displace about 60 people, said the residents.

“Another 55 people on the street,” said Pedro Ruiz-Aja, a resident. “Adding on to another 1,000 in Balboa Park, it’s ridiculous.”

Skolnik also told council members that he blames the Housing Commission for not taking aggressive action to save residential hotel rooms, despite the council committee’s request for the agency to take the lead on the issue.

“It’s a waste of everyone’s time if the designated agency is not willing to take this on full-time,” he said, adding that he “personally recognizes this as an emergency. . . . The Housing Commission hasn’t turned the corner yet.”

Skolnik accused the commission of squandering time before the January deadline to apply for state funds to rehabilitate existing residential hotels.

Ben Montijo, the commission’s executive director, told the committee that progress on the grant application was slow because developers were wary of the “strings” attached to the state money. Those include rent controls and other operating stipulations.

Councilmen Mike Gotch and Uvaldo Martinez added their own criticisms. Gotch showed his displeasure with a Planning Department recommendation to simply keep track of the number of hotel rooms that are torn down during the next year, although the committee had indicated that it wanted something done about the situation.

Gotch also made Montijo promise that his agency’s next budget would include $1.6 million to build and rehabilitate residential hotel rooms.

Martinez complained that the Housing Commission had failed to provide council members, in time for Wednesday’s meeting, a rough draft of a proposed ordinance to preserve the hotels--a document he specifically requested at a previous committee meeting.

Agreeing that the loss of hotel rooms was an emergency, council members asked the Planning Department to begin work on an emergency ordinance to stop the loss of hotel rooms until a permanent preservation measure can be enacted. They specified, however, that the emergency ordinance should, out of fairness, exempt projects already in the planning “pipeline” that might call for the demolition or conversion of hotel rooms.

Council members took care during public debate to say that they were not calling for a moratorium, but Skolnik said afterward that an emergency ordinance could have the same effect.

The Planning Department was instructed to have the first draft of the emergency ordinance ready by Dec. 4, the next time the committee meets. The emergency hotel measure would then have to be presented to the full council for approval.

Under council rules, any emergency ordinance can last as long as a year and becomes effective immediately after the full council holds public hearings and approves it. Normal ordinances go into effect 30 days after full council approval.