San Francisco, CA

Housing, Climate and environment | 2026

Examining housing conditions, extreme heat, and air quality in single-room occupancy buildings to improve climate resilience.

Single-room occupancy (SRO) buildings in San Francisco house an estimated 18,000 tenants and are located primarily in low-income neighborhoods in the Tenderloin (TL) and South of Market (SoMa) area, areas that are home to the city’s largest Asian American and Pacific Islander, Black, and Latinx communities. These 8-by-10-foot housing units were built in the 19th century to host temporary workers and have had few updates since becoming permanent housing. SROs were not designed for today’s extreme heat events or to keep wildfire smoke out. By opening their windows to cool their unit, tenants risk breathing in pollution. Brightline Defense Project (Brightline), an environmental justice nonprofit, will examine the extent to which SROs in the TL and SoMa are resilient to extreme heat and wildfire pollution. 

Brightline will convene an advisory board of SRO tenants and work in collaboration with two community partners, Tenderloin Housing Clinic’s La Voz Latina (LVL) program and Central City SRO Collaborative’s (CCSROC) tenant leadership program, to gather data. The advisory board will co-develop a survey of fellow SRO tenants on their housing conditions, outreach materials, and a summary report. LVL and CCSROC will survey tenants on living conditions such as window functionality, mold, and weatherization at five SRO buildings and monitor indoor air quality and temperatures. Ultimately, the project team will summarize survey results and air quality and temperature measurements in a final report. 

Through this work, Brightline hopes to inform the San Francisco Department of Public Health (SFDPH), the Tenderloin Housing Clinic’s Code Enforcement Outreach Program, community organizations, and residents about the impacts of extreme heat and air pollution on SRO tenants. The project teams will host workshops to train tenants on disaster preparedness and air quality monitoring. Tenant leaders and residents’ voices will be central to this work, bringing wide-ranging perspectives into discussions with SFDPH and other stakeholders to shape future resilience strategies at the city level that will improve SROs’ resilience to extreme heat and air pollution.