I, also, lived in what might be described as a pseudo SRO for about nine months in 1998/99. I witnessed similar things.
I'm not sure where these (SROs) should exist or how many of them we should have but it is completely reasonable and judicious to heavily regulate them and keep them out of neighborhoods where personal and familial status has reached a higher level of development.
Nobody wants an SRO near them. In theory, it’s just a small, affordable room, and that sounds fine. The reality is quite different.
SROs are problematic because they aren’t and cannot be communities. They are warehouses for the desperate, and mostly dropping off points. Residents get more isolated. Others can describe that experience better than I.
I can understand the perspective that homeless people are better off with some sort of home than the street. But the reality is homelessness is complex, and a flophouse doesn’t provide the support that people need to get back on their feet. The folks who posted about their experiences are inspirational, but I don’t know if they are typical.
I suspect your argument stops at not wanting to live next to SRO's, and that the rest of it is just post hoc rationalization to an emotional reaction.
Seriously it breaks down after that. Your first sentence above for example should clue you in. It's not exactly dripping with magnanimity.
Homelessness is complex, but who says that you can't house the homeless and provide them support?
In the US, with it's byzantine medical and legal environment, where even 'good people' can end up owing six figures unexpectedly, nearly everyone is in danger of becoming homeless.
It's especially true now that our society is so fragmented, with everyone leaving behind all their social support to go make a buck elsewhere.
I worked in this space, including working to set up pilot programs to transition section-8 voucher recipients into homeowners, and helping to advocate for the rights of families stuck in slumlord situations in unsafe apartments. My family and I fundraise and work a couple of days a week in a food pantry about 500 feet from my home that supports folks in our neighborhood.
My disagreement that prompted my post is that the factors that drive people to last resort housing, whether that be scummy hotels or SROs are almost always tied to other things where people need some sort of support. If your idea of humanitarian action is sticking people in a room, I understand that but deeply disagree.
SROs aren't social services endeavors. They are private enterprises focused on exploiting the desperate and extracting as much money as possible from these folks in minimally viable buildings. Here's an example of one in Brooklyn preying on young people: https://gothamist.com/news/slumlord-matchmaker-brooklyn-land...
Your comment above is getting down-voted into oblivion, and when read in isolation I think you will certainly understand why.
That demonstrates the problem with the downvoters, not with him.
People are pretty naive, and those of a certain ideology in particular have a habit of putting more weight on their uninformed idealistic assumptions than on the real world experience of others, who they promptly dismiss as intolerant/nazi/whateverist, at their own peril.
I bet the downvoters haven’t helped struggling people half as much as what he mentioned just in his post.