Just off of the main drag in the Lower Haight, property owner David Nale's attempts to convert 15 rooms in three Fillmore street addresses he owns to an official Single Room Occupancy hotel has the neighbors getting defensive. Although the Examiner reports that Nale has already been renting out rooms in his three properties on a monthly basis for some four years now, the surrounding Lower Haighters don't want to see him get the permits he needs from the Planning Department to officially offer individual leases to tenants and make his property an SRO.

Of course, neighbors anywhere in the city tend to flinch anytime the letters "SRO" are uttered in their neighborhood, but in this case they locals seem to be focusing their NIMBY-rage on the landlord himself rather than the possibility of 15 single-room tenants. In their letters to the Planning Department, they claimed Nale unlawfully evicted longterm tenants and completely neglected managing the property. (On the other hand, the Ex calls the 15 units "well-manicured".) They've also latched on to the Nale's application to build a roofdeck on the building, which would be necessary open-space for an SRO, citing noise and light issues for adjacent properties. A petition opposing the project also says one neighbor spotted a tenant throwing trash out the window, although that hardly seems like something the landlord could have immediately prevented.

As Nale told the Examiner, not everyone qualifies for an SRO lease in the Tenderloin (or would necessarily want to live there for that matter) and his goal is to make "an SRO in a pleasant neighborhood." So to that point, we're inclined to think Nale's $999 monthly lease price for a nice address in the Lower Haight with utilities and housekeeping (and a roofdeck!) included actually seems fairly reasonable given the painful rents in the city. As Curbed pointed out, a sort of reverse-NIMBY thing happened nearby on Divisadero when neighbors petitioned to allow a patio behind a popular upscale pizza joint Ragazza. So, you know, not all neighbors are out to put a stop to everything, but pizza does sound more appetizing than low income housing.

[SFExaminer]
[CurbedSF]