San Francisco May Provide Mass Testing for SRO Residents

While San Francisco flattens the curve, its single room occupancy hotels, home to many of the city’s poorest residents, have seen a “troubling” rise in COVID-19 positive cases, city officials say.

Now the Board of Supervisors is fast-tracking emergency legislation to provide mass testing to those living in SRO hotels. The legislation would also fund assistance from people familiar with SROs, and who can speak the same language as many if its residents, such as Cantonese.

There are roughly 500 SRO hotels in San Francisco containing about 20,000 living units, many of which are home to families sharing a single room.

As of May 11, more than 170 residents in 53 SRO hotels have tested positive for COVID-19, according to data presented by a group of SRO leaders Monday. Many SRO residents share bathrooms and kitchens.

San Francisco Supervisor Aaron Peskin authored the legislation, which was approved by the Board of Supervisors Land Use and Transportation Committee Monday and will go to a full vote by the board Tuesday. If approved, it will become law in 10 days.

“San Francisco’s SRO’s have seen a phenomenal increase in COVID-19 cases, which are actually quite staggering,” Peskin said Monday.

The legislation mandates city health officials notify SRO leaders when a tenant tests positive, as well as establishing a hotline for SRO residents to call public health officials to answer questions, and when “feasible” for the city to supply face coverings to SRO residents, and to provide anonymous, aggregated data on COVID-19 cases within SRO hotels.

Peskin decried a lackluster response by the city’s Department of Public Health, which was detailed in a series of emails revealed in April. Peskin publicly called out an earlier public health response to COVID-19 in SROs after health workers mistook two Chinese brothers for one another, and SRO residents testing positive were told it was OK to quarantine in a building that only had shared bathrooms and kitchens.

— Joe Fitzgerald Rodriguez, (@FitzTheReporter)