What is an SRO building

In this post, I want to break it down for you. to become more understandable.

One of the NYC Occupancies still exists but DOB doesn’t issue it anymore

SRO means “single room occupancy” and also HPD (house preservation and development) classifies them as B Units that are pretty similar to motels or university dorms,

Several rooms are beside each other with a shared bathroom and kitchen. (bathroom and kitchen are located outside the units in a public area)

SRO was one of the encouraging programs to fight against the housing crisis and homelessness that happened during World War II

Immediately after the first day of the war, the economy started to sink down and a financial recession happened.

as one of the consequences, many people lost their jobs and the roof over their heads and needed many governmental agencies like the Department of Building step in to find a solution

One of them was SRO, back then it was a good answer to this problem and was able to accommodate many people. But after years when the economy became more stable, DOB stopped issuing SRO C of O because they don’t see the need to continue the program.

Still, in some parts of NYC, Specially in the Bronx and Brooklyn, you can find SRO buildings.

( if you want to know more about Certificate of Occupancy or C of O please click on it and go to the page)

As long as SRO is not a profitable project anymore, you can file an ALT-1 job to convert the building from SRO to regular residential and obtain a new C of O, but for your information, you are still able to continue the current C of O and by submitting an ALT-2 job for interior renovation, but as I mentioned above most investors don’t like to stick with it and prefer to convert it.

(if you want to get more information about the DOB Process, please click here)