SRO Leaders Training Culminates in Celebration

Stories about people living in SROs (Single Room Occupancy Hotels) usually focus on the grim experience, the loneliness, the insecurity, the dangers of sexual abuse, and all the health code violations: poor sanitation, bedbug infestations, and mold. But the joyous graduation ceremony – or more accurately, bash –  where 36 SRO tenants celebrated their eight weeks of leadership training with SRO Families United Collaborative, is equally part of the story.

Among the new SRO leaders were SOMCAN members Teresita Castillo, Maria Cisneros, Cristina Corpuz, and Tetet Naval. On the morning of May 25th, they arrived at 201 Turk Street to find balloons, banners and breakfast awaiting them. After breakfast, Angelica Cabande, SOMCAN’s Organizational Director, gave the about-to-be grads big paper cutouts of raised fists, along with crayons and colored markers, for a final exercise. “Write about what you’ve learned throughout the course of the training,” she urged them. “Be bold, be creative.” 

In Spanish, Tagalog, Mandarin, Cantonese and English, participants wrote on the clenched paper fingers: “Tenants’ rights,” “Workers’ rights,” “Immigrants’ rights,” “Stand up!” and “Organize!” Many used the fist to high-five their home organization, since SRO Families United is a city-wide collaboration among grassroots organizations in SoMa, Chinatown, the Mission and the Tenderloin: Chinatown Community Development Center, Chinese Progressive Association, Coalition on Homelessness and Dolores Street Community Services join with SOMCAN.

“This plurality,” said SRO Families United Senior Project Coordinator Raúl Fernández-Berriozábal is “very empowering. When we have rallies in City Hall, officials see this variety of people. They see babies, they see the elderly, they see someone in a wheelchair, someone who is African-American, someone who is Asian, someone who is Latino, someone who is Filipino. We are multicultural, multi-ethnic, and multi-neighborhood and you see we are all coming together as one force.” 

Supervisor Jane Kim sees this force and expressed her support by presiding over the graduation ceremony. While a boom box played the august strains of Pomp and Circumstance, each grad, in their own gold-trimmed paper mortarboard cap and borrowed gown, stood in anticipation.  Kim awarded each person a Certificate of Honor signed by every City Supervisor, while Coordinator Raúl gave them their SRO Families United Leadership Training certificate, inscribed with their own name. The solemn ceremony morphed into a laughter-filled photographic free-for-all, as proud friends and family members crowded around with their phone cameras to take individual and group shots of the grads with Supervisor Kim and Coordinator Fernández-Berriozábal.

During lunch, the SOMCAN grads talked about their hopes of continuing to be active with SRO Families United. Cristina Corpuz said: “What I've learned, I can also share with others around me. It’s not only knowing your rights, but also standing up for your rights and understanding what is going on around you, especially with the government officials whose responsibility it is to take care of the well-being of the community. I wish I could come back again for a lot more seminars.”

Originating in 2001, in the San Francisco Department of Building Inspection, the program had the goal of increasing code enforcement in dilapidated SRO hotels. But SRO Families United Collaborative has become much, much more. Raúl explains: “With the Dot Com Boom, housing got so expensive that we saw entire families living in these hotels. I'm talking 8x10 foot rooms with families of 5 or 6 living in sub-standard conditions.  We started getting funding for the Collaborative when we realized these families were not being helped.”

With Raúl as Coordinator, the member organizations, like SOMCAN, recruited tenants to apply for the training. Before the training, many tenants aren’t familiar with the laws that are meant to protect them. As Cristina Corpuz put it: “I didn’t know anything about the laws. That we have the right, for example, to talk about our problems with living in a SRO. When I first moved in, I used the common bathroom and shower down the hall. I had a lot of bad experiences, to tell you the truth. I am so thankful to the Lord that I am safe now. I have my own restroom in my room. I sometimes have a senior moment in my brain, but at least, now, there is something in my brain about housing rights. The landlord can't just kick you out of your house. I was so scared, you know. But now I have people in the community that are ready to help us. That's why people are so scared, because they lack knowledge about their rights."

Low-income tenants learn how to use the laws for their own benefit. Participants learn community organizing, eviction prevention, labor and immigration law. The aim of the training is to build solidarity among SRO residents and to equip them with the tools and knowledge to advocate for their own rights and needs. Learning to speak up to city officials, trainees find they can actually influence housing policy. Said Raúl:“One of the most powerful activities we had throughout these trainings was to advocate in City Hall for inclusionary housing. We were able to affect the policies. This was super powerful because families saw an immediate impact to their efforts.”

Maria Cisneros agrees: “I learned how to defend myself, how to speak up for my community, how to talk about the problems and how to go to City Hall and tell officials what we need. There tends to be a lot of drug use in SROs, so we find the needles and gear all over, and that’s not safe for our kids. We don't have our own kitchens, we don't have our own bathrooms and that’s not fair. The people in City Hall need to help us get better places because we really need it.”

Just as important as learning to speak out on serious issues, trainees learn to build community, make friends and enjoy themselves at the sessions.  Maria stated, “Sometimes I stay away from people because I don't know them. But here, what I've learned is to have more fun with others.” Graduate Teresita Castillo is a woman of few words, but her words express an essential element of the training: “I learned a lot from the SRO training. I made some friends there and I really enjoyed it.  We really learned how to give and take and how to get to know each other.” When you’ve experienced the loneliness of living in an SRO, knowing you can have fun with people is not just a side-effect of leadership training. It is fundamentally empowering.