San Francisco Supervisors to Vote on Legislation Expanding SRO Voting Rights

Landmark legislation to expand SRO voting rights passed the Rules Committee yesterday by a 2-1 vote, with Supervisor Sean Elsbernd dissenting. The full Board of Supervisors will vote on the ordinance August 14.

Supervisor Ross Mirkirimi’s legislation requires that individuals “engaged in ‘get out the vote’ activities be provided access to Residential Hotels as visitors of guests and occupants, on the same basis as any other visitor.” The legislation was put together in the wake of a number of horror stories where voter outreach workers were not allowed into certain SRO hotels despite being accompanied by longtime residents.

There are 500 SRO hotels in San Francisco with 30,000 residents. These residents are very low-income and have traditionally been registered to vote at a lower rate than San Francisco’s general population. SRO residents are less likely to have televisions, cable, internet access and telephones.

Steve Eastman, an SRO tenant at the Raman Hotel, said that SRO residents are “essentially isolated” from media. Robert Haaland of SEIU said that going door-to-door is the most effective method of voter outreach and that when campaigners conducted voter outreach in SROs last November, turnout among SRO residents matched other areas of the city.

Elsbernd objected to the idea that hotel guests – as well as occupants – could invite people into SROs for “get out the vote” activities. He used as his example campaigning at the Park Merced Complex and dormitories at San Francisco State University in his district, two other housing complexes that have so called “gatekeepers” at the building’s entrance. “When we were campaigning in those places,” he said, “we just had a resident of the building do the door-to-door.”

Mirkarimi seemed amused at the idea of comparing SROs to college dormitories, and seemed surprised at Elsbernd’s challenge. Haaland agreed and said that this essentially amounted to discrimination against poor people. “There should be no difference in the ability to do voter outreach between apartments and SROs,” Haaland said.

After the 2006 election, Paul Hogarth wrote wrote about the importance of SRO residents turnout in Chris Daly’s victory over Rob Black in District 6. Elsbernd endorsed Black in that race.

Send feedback to bmalley@sfsu.edu