Single Room Occupancy housing policy: A study of Vancouver's SRO housing

The focus of this thesis is upon the problems facing Single Room Occupancy (SRO) housing in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. The central proposition is that single room housing located in the downtown remains a vital part of the housing stock, meeting the particularistic needs of certain low income single person households. Theoretically, SRO housing is located within the nexus of physical social, and market dimensions of the city. A comprehensive review of the literature reveals three intellectual streams concerned with SRO housing: the sociological, the historical and the planning perspectives. Within each of these schools attitudes towards SRO housing have shifted in response to the evolving functions of SRO housing. As demand for SRO housing declined throughout North America during the period of post war prosperity, sociological discourses of pathology delegitimized SRO housing, justifying efforts to eradicate SROs from city centres. The complex links between the loss of SRO units and the rise of visible homelessness in the 1980s prompted policy efforts to save remaining units, and in a number of jurisdictions, to reverse the institutional barriers to the creation of new SRO housing. Case studies of San Diego's and Los Angeles' policy responses to the loss of SRO units are examined in some detail. Vancouver's SRO stock's origins, evolution, and residential profile is consistent with the continent-wide model of SRO housing and conforms to the theoretical model of changing downtown land uses. Estimates of stock changes indicate SRO stock continues to be removed from the market. The City's traditional policy response of replacing SRO units with self contained social housing units, is no longer viable due to rising land values and to severe cuts in funding levels. Simultaneously, increasing middle class residential development in the district is threatening the continued viability of the area as a functioning SRO district.