What is the legal definition of an SRO in San Francisco (or elsewhere)?”
SRO (single room occupancy) hotel means a structure which contains six or more SRO hotel rooms. An SRO hotel does not include any institution in which persons are housed or detained under legal restraint or hospitalized or otherwise under medical, nursing or psychiatric care, or fraternity or sorority houses. SRO hotel room means a guest room or efficiency unit, as defined by California Health and Safety Code section 17958.1, intended or designed to be used, or which is used, rented, or hired out, to be occupied, or which is occupied, as a primary residence, by guests. The expression “single room occupancy” or, more commonly “SRO”, refers to a building that houses people in single rooms. This means that tenants must share bathrooms and kitchens. The term originated in New York City, probably in the 1930s (the Oxford English Dictionary provides an earliest citation of 1941), but the institutions date back at least fifty years before the nickname was applied to them. SROs exist in many l
