Residential Hotel Law Targeted : 18-Month Phase-Out of Protective Ordinance Is Urged
For more than a year and a half, developers and owners of residential hotels--traditionally the city’s most affordable housing--have been eager to be rid of an ordinance that keeps them from razing or converting the buildings unless they replace each unit somewhere else in the city.
The developers and owners believe that the ordinance has hobbled downtown development, preventing the conversion of run-down hotels to spiffy office buildings and other uses.
The San Diego City Council today will consider a proposal to phase out the ordinance, and advocates of affordable housing are outraged.
The council is scheduled to act on a Planning Department and Housing Commission recommendation to phase out over 18 months a requirement that the owners of single-room occupancy hotels replace any units they demolish or convert to other uses. The ordinance was approved after the number of single-room occupancy hotels, home to senior citizens on small pensions, downtown laborers and low-income people, dropped significantly in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
Would Phase Out 800 Rooms
Under the proposed ordinance, the city would gradually allow up to 800 single-room occupancy hotel rooms to be converted or demolished over the next 18 months without requiring the owners to provide new units. After 18 months, the restrictions on converting or demolishing the rooms, the vast majority of which are in the center city, would be lifted altogether.
Single-room occupancy hotel rooms typically are about 100 square feet and sparsely furnished. Bathrooms are shared, as are kitchens, if they exist at all. Rent generally runs $200 to $300 a month.
The proposal comes more than a year and a half after the council approved an emergency ordinance aimed at slowing the loss of residential hotels. The number of single-room occupancy (SRO) units dropped from just over 4,500 in 1976 to about 3,300 at the end of 1985, when the emergency ordinance was approved.
Since then, because of the restrictions and because new residential hotels are being built, the number of SRO units has risen to just over 3,500. Advocates of affordable housing, however, say the proposal to phase out the restrictions is premature and would hurt the low-income people who need SROs the most.
“This alternative, 18-month ordinance, I think it’s ludicrous. I call it the scheduled demolition ordinance,” said Catherine Rodman, chairwoman of the Affordable Housing Subcommittee of the Regional Task Force on the Homeless, the successor to the Mayor’s Task Force on the Downtown Homeless.
Rodman, who also works as a housing attorney for the Legal Aid Society, said the council should adopt another proposed ordinance, which was originally considered by the Housing Commission, that would continue to require SRO owners to replace units they convert or demolish.
Rodman noted that, although housing officials are hopeful that residential hotels will continue to be built, the new proposal does not formally tie the demolition or conversion of SROs to new construction.
“That doesn’t even say, ‘Let’s keep what we’ve got,’ ” Rodman said. “It says, ‘Let’s hope that maybe someone will build these things and that they will be affordable for a short while.’ ”
Judy Lenthall, a senior planner with the city Planning Department, said the department recommended that the one-for-one replacement requirement be phased out gradually instead of eliminated overnight to avoid a rapid depletion in the stock of residential hotels, even though there are numerous residential hotel projects in the works.
Link to Homeless Cited
“We have a lot of projects so we can lift (the restrictions) a little bit,” Lenthall said. “But the Planning Department can’t just walk away.”
The council will consider providing more incentives--such as low-interest loans from the Housing Commission--for developers to put up SROs, but Rodman said those incentives simply are not enough.
Rodman said the loss of residential hotels results in a rise in the homeless population, because the hotels are often the last resort for poor people before they move to the streets.
Recently, SROs have made something of a comeback from their depletion in the early 1980s. More than 250 units are now under construction, and more than 1,000 units are in the planning or design stage, according to Lenthall.
Developers and SRO owners point to those statistics as evidence that the restrictions on converting or demolishing residential hotels are unnecessary. In addition, they say the restrictions are an impediment to downtown development.
Bud Fischer, part owner of a new residential hotel that opened in April, said that there are plenty of SROs right now because his hotel usually has vacancies. “In a year there won’t be any shortage of rooms,” he said. “So what’s the crisis?”
Kay Carter, acting director of the Gaslamp Quarter Council, characterized the one-for-one replacement requirement as unfair to property owners. “They could never recover costs on a one-for-one replacement . . . so we feel it would be a major disincentive for development,” she said.
Rodman said the preservation ordinance is essential to maintaining an adequate stock of relatively cheap housing. She also disputed the contention that there will be plenty of residential hotels when current projects are completed, saying that the gains may be offset by the loss of other residential hotels.
She added, however, that residential hotels are not necessarily a solution to the affordable housing question. Most of the newer SRO units will cost about as much per month as a cheap studio, Rodman said, so the people who really need help won’t get it. She said the city should ensure that the increase in the number of relatively expensive SROs is not negated by the loss of older, less expensive SROs.
Fischer said residential hotels are not a solution to the homeless problem, so advocates for the homeless should focus their attention elsewhere.
“The homeless don’t live in the SROs. The homeless can’t pay the rent,” he said.
