It seems the most unlikely of combinations: single-room-occupancy hotels, those holding pens for the John Hinckleys and Travis Bickles of the world, and not-for-profit organizations, those bastions of goody-goodyism. Yet such a combination has emerged on the north side, and it may represent a new direction for Chicago in the provision of low-income housing.
Housing for one has been with us as long as the city, answering the demand of railroad laborers and other transient workers, of immigrants saving to bring their families to America. “Prior to the 1890s, most single men lived in boardinghouses. But boardinghouses were seen as paternalistic. People wanted a sense of freedom. It was at this time that most SRO hotels emerged,” commented Bob Slayton, Chicago author of a forthcoming book on single-room-occupancy housing.
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Entire SRO communities sprang up, most of them on the outskirts of the Loop. A more middle-class rooming house neighborhood existed in the Grand and Clark area. Working-class residences could be found north of the Loop up to North Avenue, on the south side along State and Clark streets, and slightly farther away in the Milwaukee-Ashland-Division and Pilsen areas. The largest concentration was on the near west side, in an area known as the “main stem,” between Randolph and Van Buren, Halsted and the river.
Political attitudes also hastened the demise of SROs, according to Eric Rubenstein, president of the Single Room Operators Association, whose members operate 90 percent of the SROs in the city. “Richard Daley was a family man, and he must have considered SROs to be evil. In any case, the city went after many SRO owners. It wasn’t fair to the residents, since the majority were low-income workers, pensioners, and welfare recipients,” said Rubenstein.
In the middle 1980s, attitudes toward single-room housing began to change. A 1985 study by the Jewish Council on Urban Affairs showed that half of Chicago’s SRO tenants were employed and half went to church regularly. Despite the stereotype of the SRO resident as a drifter, 29 percent of those surveyed had lived at their present abodes four years or more. People became more willing to grant SRO housing its place.
The remodeling, which is about to begin and will take nine months, is being financed by a mix of public and private money. When it’s done, the Harold Washington SRO will have 56 shared-bathroom apartments, and 10 studios and 4 one-bedrooms with private baths. On the ground floor there is room for nine businesses. Butzen says seven of the storefronts have already been taken by “everything from a Vietnamese restaurant to a hair stylist to a kosher butcher.”
The future does not look especially promising to champions of SROs. Lakefront SRO Corporation was interested in buying and remodeling the Stuart Plaza Apartments, a building on North Winthrop with a reputation as a neighborhood trouble spot. Lakefront backed off when the community refused to get behind the project. “People haven’t seen the outcome of the Moreland [Washington] experiment,” explained Jack Markowski, executive director of the Edgewater Community Council. “There’s a question of how the management of that building will work out. Maybe in a year or year and a half, we’ll get back to them.”
