City Council Committee Approves Single-Room Occupancy Hotel Ordinance
(CBS) -- The City Council Housing Committee is recommending full approval of an ordinance that would make it more expensive to turn single room occupancy hotels into market-rate units, reports WBBM Political Editor Craig Dellimore.
Single room occupancy hotels often house low-income people. Some developers have turned such housing into higher prices apartments, pushing out the poor tenants. The new, and repeatedly revised ordinance would force building owners to pay relocation costs to displaces residents or they could try to find groups that want to buy the buildings and keep them SRO's.
Eric Rubenstein, director of the Single Room Housing Assistance Corp…representing operators, says this ordinance is better but not good enough.
"Portions are flawed and either incorrect, incomplete, inconsistent, unworkable, unrealistic or unbalanced," Rubenstein said.
But housing advocates cheered when the ordinance passed the committee.