No room to spare 450 S.F. families found living in cramped quarters

Kathleen Sullivan / SF Chronicle 24oct01

In a glance, Yu Lian Tan can survey her family's entire home.

	Yu Lian Tan got her two youngest children milk after school. They have a small refrigerator but no cooking facilities. Chronicle photo by Brant Ward

Sitting on the bottom of a bright red bunk bed, Tan sees shelves stocked with food, dishes, a refrigerator, a small round table -- the kitchen and dining room.

Looking left, she sees the shelf with the computer her teenage daughter uses to do her homework standing up -- the study.

Looking right, through the room's solitary window, she sees clean clothing hanging to dry in a sliver of sunlight in the light well.

Tan, 46, reaches under the bed to show a visitor what she uses to bathe her youngest daughter -- a shallow plastic container.

The Tan family is one of more than 450 families living in residential hotels -- also known as single-room occupancy hotels -- in San Francisco, according to a census released yesterday by the Citywide Families in SROs Collaborative.

Those families include 760 children. Forty percent of the children are under 5 years old.

The census, which was followed by interviews with nearly 200 families, was financed by the San Francisco Department of Public Health.

Among its findings:

• The average family in an SRO consists of more than three people who have lived in a 10-by-10 room -- no kitchen or bathroom -- for more than four years.
• Chinatown has the greatest number of the families living in hotels (62 percent), followed by the Tenderloin (13 percent), the Mission (11 percent) and South of Market (4 percent). The remainder (10 percent) are scattered in other neighborhoods.
• Half of the parents said living in a hotel had caused health problems for themselves and their children.
• Most families living in hotels are immigrants whose native language is not English.
• After paying the rent and buying groceries, the average family has $290 left to spend on other needs -- or about $70 a week. In the Mission, the average is $63. In the Tenderloin, $37.

At a Tuesday press conference in Chinatown, parents talked about what it's like raising children in the often unsanitary and unsafe confines of a hotel.

They sat at a table beneath a banner that said, in Chinese, Spanish, English and Vietnamese: "Families demand decent housing."

Clari Luz Sanchez, a home health care worker, has lived in the Julian Hotel in the Mission District for seven years with her husband -- a mechanic -- and daughter.

"My daughter Heidi turned 6 today," Sanchez said, speaking through a translator. She looked at her daughter, who was sitting in a folding chair in the front row, wearing a Winnie the Pooh jacket and lace anklets. "She has lived there her whole life."

At the Julian, the family contends with rats, mice, cockroaches and drug dealers, Sanchez said. Strangers come and go at all hours. "We don't feel safe using the bathroom after 9 o'clock at night," she said.

Sanchez, who helped take the census, said she learned by talking to families in other hotels that her family's situation isn't unique.

Bi Yi Wong, a single mother with an 11-year-old son, said she commutes to Oakland for work in a packaging plant. She has lived in a San Francisco hotel for four years.

"By the time I get home it's late," said Wong, speaking through a translator. "I have no idea what my son is doing until I get home."

For the Tan family, it is cramped living conditions that presents the greatest problem.

When her teenage daughter needs to study, Tan takes her two younger daughters to the park.

When her husband, who sells chestnuts at a Chinatown stand, needs some peace and quiet during dinner, she takes all the kids out.

"I spend a lot of time on the street with the kids," she said.

Tan said the family tries to keep a low profile. Their floor had holes, so her husband recently installed a patchwork quilt of linoleum pieces, stitched together with silver electrical tape.

She requested that her hotel not be named.

"The manager is often saying, 'You have too many kids and you're still paying the same rent,' " said Tan, speaking through a translator.

"My husband suggested sending them back to (family in) China," she said. "That wouldn't be good for them."

Changing life for SRO families The Citywide Families in SROs (single-room occupancy hotels) Collaborative conducted a census of families living in San Francisco's residential hotels and yesterday recommended that Mayor Willie Brown and the Board of Supervisors:

• Improve living conditions by increasing the number of inspections in residential hotels and stiffening punitive measures to achieve code compliance; strengthen housing codes to protect children's health and pay for education on tenants' rights and fire prevention.
• Push for higher wages, worker rights' education and job training programs to meet the needs of parents.
• Provide more and better family and children's services for hotel residents.
• Protect, improve and build more low-income housing for families with children.