Just two years earlier, thirty plaintiffs had sued the lessee of the Delta, charging that the building was unfit for habitation. Fire hazards have also plagued SROs. In 1993, at the Folsom Street Hotel, a fire killed one tenant and injured 13 others. Three years later, in 1996, the Mission Hotel was again charged with fire safety violations, after having incurred so many violations in 1993 that The City pulled all residents until repairs were completed. At the Minna Lee, this past December, manager Mary Patel claimed she didn't know that she was required to supply batteries for smoke detectors.
Some people never learn.
SRO owners profit from their tenants' problems. After that deadly fire at Folsom Street, when they repaired the damages, they converted the hotel from residency to tourist use, in clear violation of The City's 1981 resident hotel conversion law. It's now called the Soma Inn. That article also reported that manager Jack Patel attempted to convert the Dudley Apartments to higher cost facilities when that building was closed by arson. The place had rats, roaches, a broken elevator, no security despite major drug trafficking, and chronic heat and water problems.