Single-Room Occupancy Hotels in San Francisco

The San Francisco Department of Public Health conducted an HIA to explore how three policies it was considering could improve health for residents in single-room occupancy hotels, which serve as the biggest source of inexpensive housing for the city’s most vulnerable populations, such as seniors, adults with disabilities, and children. They typically offer an 8-by-10 room with shared bathrooms and kitchens. The department was considering requiring or incentivizing operators of these hotels to be certified, increasing data reporting requirements for certain characteristics such as number of rooms or showers, and incorporating data analysis and analytics into city oversight. 

The HIA found that single-room occupancy hotel operators have adequate knowledge of health, housing, and fire codes and that training focused only on city codes would not significantly improve compliance or tenant health. Instead, the HIA recommended that certification and training be focused on increasing tenants’ understanding of the well-established connections between housing and health, and the services offered by city agencies. Possible training topics include preparing a case for Adult Protective Services, communicating with individuals with mental health challenges, and communicating and engaging with city agencies. The HIA recommended that the city use an existing data platform to publish housing inspection data to make people more aware of housing conditions and property maintenance at these hotels. To expand coordination and share best practices among housing inspection departments, the HIA recommended that the city create an interagency committee, with a subcommittee dedicated to establishing and tracking inspection performance measures.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention provided funding for this work through the Health Impact Assessment to Foster Healthy Community Design grant.