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“There are a lot of queer people that live in the SROs who’ve been alienated from their families because they haven’t had access to the safety net and support,” Bryant said. SRO residents both inside and outside their homes exist in a constant state of surveillance.Īnd San Francisco would certainly be less of a gay mecca without affordable housing. You have people in there with four or five kids, mother and father living in the hotel.”

“There are also families that live in the hotels. “A lot of undocumented people live in the hotels,” Sanyika Bryant, a housing counselor with the Mission District-based group Causa Justa/Just Cause, told Truthout. Ampu’s story is echoed in the countless experiences of SRO tenants dealing with the same problems of housing insecurity. In contrast to the homogeneity and wealth of mostly white males of the tech industry’s gentrification, occupants of SROs are largely comprised of marginalized people at the bottom of the social and economic ladder, including many queer, trans and people of color.

“They’re in the microwaves, they’re in the elevator,” said Ampu, whose floor is currently bedbug free, but not roach free. There’s a history of having roaches, too. According to the Mission SRO Collaborative’s last survey in 2009, the number’s nearly 75 percent. Like most SROs in the Mission, the Altamont has a history of bedbugs. These rules are typical of subsidized SROs in the city. According to the Altamont’s rules, Ampu’s girlfriend Craig can sleep over just 10 nights out of the month.

Ampu is not allowed to have more than two guests in her room at a time, and there are no guests after 10 pm unless they’ve already provided ID to a desk clerk who surveils the place 24/7. Bathroom and kitchens are shared, as in a dorm or a prison itself. SRO rooms at the Altamont typically measure about 11 by 14 feet, barely larger than the size of a prison cell. The hotel exclusively houses people like her: people who couldn’t otherwise afford to live in a city where wealth inequality is on par with Rwanda’s. Bathroom and kitchens are shared, as in a dorm or a prison itself.Īmpu lives at the Altamont Hotel in San Francisco’s Mission District, a “single-room occupancy” hotel, or SRO, where rooms are primarily rented out long-term to low-income residents who pay rent that is partially subsidized by the Department of Housing and Urban Development.