Abner Arguello bounds out of the gigantic closet. The 6-year-old lands on the blue-grey tile of the third floor apartment with a thud. A brown and orange box follows, spilling a pair of brand new Air Jordan sneakers. His three-year-old brother, Gustavo, mimics his presentation and pulls out an identical pair of shoes half the size. These shoes are Christmas presents from their parents, Teresa and Juan Arguello, who hid them from the boys in the closet. It’s a month before Christmas, though, and the boys have already found them. The oldest boy, 10-year-old Juan Jr., already made use of his new pair of Air Jordans.

With five people living in a single room, there’s no use in hiding anything. The three rambunctious boys know every nook and cranny of this place, and there is little time alone to effectively hide anything. “Now there’s no point in wrapping them,” says Teresa. And even if she did wrap them, there isn’t any room for a Christmas tree to put them under.

The Arguellos are one of about 450 families living in the more than 500 single resident occupancy (SRO) hotels in the SOMA, Tenderloin, Mission and Chinatown neighborhoods of San Francisco, according to SRO Families United Collaborative, a non-profit organization trying to move families out of SROs.

These hotels consist of single rooms that average eight-feet by 10-feet with community bathrooms in the hallways. Some buildings have a community kitchen on the ground floor with a small locked refrigerator for each unit. Others have larger units available for families with their own bathroom and kitchen, but the Arguellos aren’t that lucky.

SROs were originally designed to house a single person. Hundreds of families, though, have found that these rooms are the only thing they can afford because of low wages, high unemployment, displacement through high rents, and a reduced supply of public housing. Some of these families are on Calworks, California’s welfare program. Others suffer from mental illness or disabilities. But 75 percent of these families are employed immigrants who simply can’t afford the high market rents in the city while supporting the average family of four.

The Arguellos have been living in SRO hotels since they came to the United States from Mexico four years ago. When they first arrived, they stayed with Teresa’s sister in Palo Alto. When she and her husband found work in a restaurant in San Francisco, they moved into an SRO in the Mission district. The two years of noisy drunks, violent drug dealers, dirty bathrooms and a wide array of rodents were hard, but it wasn’t until someone was killed on the sidewalk in front of their building that they finally decided to move to their SRO in the Tenderloin.

SROs are some of the most unsafe and dilapidated housing in San Francisco, says Hilary Kline, project coordinator for the SRO Families United Collaborative. In a 2001 report by the San Francisco Department of Public Health, half of the parents reported that living in a SRO has caused health problems, such as breathing and respiratory illnesses, infections due to unsanitary conditions, and sleep deprivation due to noise.

According to Luis Barahona, the program coordinator for the Central City SRO Collaborative, the main problem with SROs is the age of the buildings. “It’s a pretty hard place to live,” says Barahona. With such old plumbing and electrical wiring, toilets and electrical outlets often become clogged and overloaded resulting in unusable bathrooms and power outages.

The Arguello’s current residence may be safer and quieter than their SRO in the Mission, but it’s still far from perfect. “Some people fight in the night,” says Juan Jr. “I heard someone put a knife in someone’s stomach. I thought the police would come to get us, so I put my brothers in the closet. Then there are cuckoo people. They scream in the middle of the night.”

And there are pest problems. “Sometimes there are rats and little creatures that bite me in the night,” says Juan Jr. Gustavo, expertly standing on the bottom drawer of the dresser to reach the top drawer and pulling out the glue strips that they use to catch the mice living in their walls. They recently found a new one and have been laying the traps out at night. And even though Teresa says the management fumigates on a weekly basis, she still covers the mattresses with white sheets so she can see when the bedbugs come back. She has to get new mattresses about every six months.

Fueled by a constant intake of Froot Loops, Flamin’ Hot Cheetos, Top Raman, Chex Mix, lollipops, and the occasional home-cooked meal, the three boys are always in constant motion. When not sleeping or eating, the furniture serves as a jungle gym, and the square of bare floor in the center of the room is a wrestling circle.

Originally from Yucatan, Mexico, the boys’ mother Teresa tries to make Mexican and Mayan food on the two hot plates provided. Most of the time she travels to the markets in the Mission to get the ingredients she needs to cook, but there are other times when the St. Anthony Foundation around the corner will bring her food. Most recently, they brought her a whole frozen turkey for Thanksgiving. It’s still in her freezer, though, because she doesn’t have an oven to cook it in.

A lack of affordable housing and high rents enables SROs to charge whatever they want, as long as it’s lower than the cost of an apartment, and as long as they are up to code. They receive no consequences for neglecting building maintenance. “San Francisco is so expensive, so landlords know that they can charge high prices and not have to maintain the buildings,” says Barahona. “It’s 50 million times better than being homeless, though.”

Barahona says that in order to solve these problems, the old buildings need to be fixed, and there needs to be more affordable housing so families aren’t forced to live in such cramped quarters. “It’s a Catch-22, though,” he says. Pouring money into remodeling SROs could cause the rents to go up, limiting even more who can afford to rent.

“As a city, San Francisco isn’t doing all it needs to do to provide affordable housing,” says Barahona. “And I don’t know how you do it. You at least got to sit down and have a conversation about it, but I don’t even think that’s happening.”

State and federal housing assistance is only available to citizens. Legal residents currently waiting to become citizens can’t get housing assistance and often find that SROs are the only thing they can afford. The San Francisco Immigrant Rights Commission says local funds are needed to offer housing assistance to almost 350,000 immigrants in San Francisco, nearly half the city’s population. “The crisis is huge,” says Alysabeth Alexander, a community worker with La Voz Latina.

One thing that could help these families is the San Francisco Affordable Housing Fund and Public Accountability Charter Amendment. It is scheduled to be heard by the Board of Supervisors on December 4, and, if approved, will appear on the November ballot in 2008. Over the next fifteen years the amendment will set aside two-and-a-half cents for every 100 dollars the city obtains from property taxes. The money will pay for the building, repair and allocation of affordable housing.

“The families deserve to have nice housing,” says Carrera. “The kids and parents need their own bedroom. They need a yard for the kids to play. With the money they make they should be able to afford this.”