On a recent weekday afternoon, Matthew Walker was watching TV with some of his neighbors in the lobby of Centre Avenue Housing in Pittsburgh’s Hill District.
Near the front reception desk, a brightly painted wall was covered with historic black-and-white photos of the building’s former life as a YMCA.
Walker has lived in the building for several years and said he enjoys it.
“It's nice and quiet,” he said. “Nobody bothers me.”
Centre Avenue Housing — formerly home to the Hill District Y — is what’s known as an SRO, short for “single room occupancy” housing.
SROs are key to helping house the region’s lowest-income residents, according to housing advocates and experts.
SROs vary from building to building, but they are typically dormitory-style housing, where residents have their own bed and room but often share bathrooms, a communal kitchen or other spaces. Tenants are usually single adults and can live there for a few months or many years.
It’s unclear exactly how many SRO rooms exist locally. In addition to the 74-unit Centre Avenue, larger SROs in Pittsburgh include: Residences at Wood Street Downtown (259 units); McKeesport Downtown Housing (84 units); a portion of Second Avenue Commons, Downtown (43 units that are unoccupied presently due to damage from a fire earlier this year); and the upper floors of the Allegheny YMCA in the North Side (undergoing major renovation, 88 units when completed), in addition to a few other smaller sites and some informal operations.
Rents tend to be extremely affordable — between $400 and $500 monthly, which often includes utilities and in some cases meals and social services.
“This is very low-barrier housing,” said Jennifer Carter, property manager at Wood Street and a former manager at Centre Avenue.
Because SRO rents are so affordable, the buildings are a critical part of preventing homelessness.
“It is a really important part of our affordable housing system,” said Lena Andrews, CEO of nonprofit ACTION Housing, which has been involved in redeveloping and managing a number of local SROs.
“The folks who are living there are really going to be people who … would struggle the most to afford housing,” said Sarah Saadian, senior vice president of policy and field organizing for the National Low-Income Housing Coalition.
“So typically, [they’re] extremely low-income households, including those who might be most at risk of homelessness,” she said. “And in large part, this is because the housing market doesn't provide a lot of options for people who have extremely low income.”
SROs and other similar low-cost, no-frills housing options such as boarding houses were once far more widespread in most U.S. cities.
“[SROs have] been a huge part of the history of housing in the United States,” said Shamus Roller, executive director of the National Housing Law Project.
Many SROs were torn down or closed in the 1960s, ’70s, and ’80s. Changing market conditions and labor patterns (many had once housed single workers moving to cities from rural areas to look for work), the growth of the suburbs, and changes in federal policy favoring single-family housing all contributed.
In some cases, where the buildings were viewed as seedy or housing undesirable residents, some cities targeted them for “urban renewal” and tore them down, according to “Living Downtown: The History of Residential Hotels in the United States,” which examined the history of SROs.
It’s unclear exactly how many SRO rooms were lost nationally, but the book’s author estimated likely millions “of rooms [were] closed, converted, or torn down in major U.S. cities” prior to 1970.
There is now some recognition, according to Roller, that SROs kept many people off the streets.
“I think what's changing now is people realize that part of the reason that we're struggling around homelessness is that there [aren’t] enough SROs,” Roller said.
While some housing advocates have pointed to SROs as a potential partial solution for America’s shortage of affordable housing, zoning laws in most places would make it difficult to build new SROs.
Preserving the SROs that remain is crucial, said Lauri Fink, senior program officer at the Hillman Family Foundations. The Henry L. Hillman Foundation has been involved in funding a number of housing initiatives, including creating and preserving SRO units.
“It's really important that we don't lose these as a resource,” she said.
However, operating them can be challenging, said Andrews, of ACTION Housing, as rents must stay low to be affordable to residents, but expenses for such old buildings are often high.
“It's a worthwhile investment. But it is expensive,” Andrews said.
