Yesterday, the city of San Diego announced plans to streamline the permit process for Single-Room Occupancy (SRO) housing developments. The proposal, part of the Housing Action Package 2.0, seeks to incentivize the construction of affordable homes for low-income and homeless individuals in the region according to the City of San Diego. SROs have historically been an important source of low-cost housing for those at risk of becoming homeless.

San Diego's previous endeavors in providing affordable SRO housing date back to the late 1980s and early 1990s. At that time, the city was seen as a model in addressing homelessness by encouraging the construction of new SRO hotels and the rehabilitation of old ones. Frank Landerville, the executive director of San Diego’s Regional Task Force on Homelessness during this period, emphasized the importance of SROs in solving the city's homeless crisis. He stated, "While you won’t solve your homeless problem just by building SROs, you can’t solve your homeless problem without them" as quoted on the city's website.

However, in more recent years, the city has lost many of these naturally affordable homes. The decline is attributed to the emergence of new housing, office, and retail projects in the area. As of 2020, only 4,732 active SRO units remained in San Diego, according to a report by the San Diego Housing Commission.

To reverse this trend, the streamlined permit process proposed in Housing Action Package 2.0 aims to encourage developers to build more SRO housing. Under this amendment, SROs would be included as qualifying projects in areas near transit where affordable housing is either unavailable or limited, such as the Affordable Housing in All Communities program.

The full set of proposed policy reforms is set to be presented to the City Council for consideration in the coming weeks.