Former Residents of SOMA

Unfinished History

Countless men have lived their lives in single room occupancy hotels in the central city neighborhoods of San Francisco. The area between 3rd and 4th, Mission and Folsom was once a teeming neighborhood of such hotels, and many of the men who fought and won in the 1930s as dockers and seamen retired to live out their days in this area. Starting the mid-1960s they were relentlessly driven from the neighborhood by the Redevelopment Agency.

Former residents of the SOMA.

Residents in a SOMA residence hotel.

photos: courtesy Ira Nowinski

One of the many couples who lived in the residential hotels that once filled up the area that is now Yerba Buena Gardens and the Moscone Convention Center.

Photo: © Ted Kurihara

Hanging in the Community Room at the Mars Hotel, 1968.

Abandoned hotel in Yerba Buena project area, c. 1970.