Plot

Caged. Invisible. Shamed. Trapped. These words mark the tenants, clerks and even the owners of Chicago's last remaining Singe Room Occupancy (SRO) hotels. These small spaces are home for many at the bottom of Chicago's housing ladder. Cloaked in darkness and secrecy, these hotels are often maligned as drug dens and havens for prostitution but the people who live, work and own these hotels have never fully shared their stories.

CAGED MEN: STORIES FROM CHICAGO'S SINGLE ROOM OCCUPANCY HOTELS Aaron Shipp, June 2015

Caged. Invisible. Shamed. Trapped. These words mark the tenants, clerks and even the owners of Chicago's last remaining Singe Room Occupancy (SRO) hotels. These small spaces are home for many at the bottom of Chicago's housing ladder. Cloaked in darkness and secrecy, these hotels are often maligned as drug dens and havens for prostitution but the people who live, work and own these hotels have never fully shared their stories. Between 1960 and 1980 nearly eighty percent of the SRO housing stock was destroyed or converted. Urban renewal had taken shape in most big cities in America and skid row was seen as a scourge that impeded progress. Buy 1990, Chicago's Skid row on West Madison Street was otherwise transformed. The Starr, Major, Ram, Elk, all destroyed to make way for the Kennedy expressway and a luxury apartment complex, the Presidential Towers. In the fall of 2012, Chicago Alderman, James Cappleman and Brendan O'Reilly authored an ordinance that would abolish building code 78.1, the municipal code that allows cubicle-style hotels.

Right when you hit the vestibule at the New Jackson Hotel on Chicago's near westside, immediately you sense the that place is about to capsize. The stairs leading up are lopsided; the floors are slanted and the door jams are askew. The faux flowers and ferns show erect life in a place where photosynthesis doesn't exist. Windows are covered with foil or ad hoc window coverings and the grim makes the place impenetrable to sunlight. There is a need for a perpetual handrail in the lobby to help right yourself before the clerks window where Roark E. Moody stands. At 6'4'', Moody has been a clerk and resident at the New Jackson Hotel for nearly ten years. He adeptly pivots between clerk and confidante, trying to understand tenants' complaints and to resolve situations favorably for both the residents and SRO owners. A star athlete at DuSable High school, and one of the most decorated alumni in the school's history, he reflects on his youth and playing sports as well as his tour of duty in Vietnam in the 1st Cavalry Division. Roark, in between working his shift as a clerk, sells Streetwise newspaper and writes poetry. Decades ago, Roark was dubbed as just "thinking too much," when he was denied his medical benefits while being treated for PTSD that was brought on by his combat in Vietnam. He has been married twice and has two sons. When you enter Roark's room it feels like a pashas den. It's dark, incense burn, a cat prowls nearby and hard bop plays on his CD player. Look more closely and the hominess changes to the utter randomness of it all: two ten-speed bikes, a sink positioned off the wall, baseball hats of every imaginable team college and pro and hundreds of VHS movies. As Roark sits under the lights for the interview, he mentions that there is a new girl in the hotel the defied all stereotypes of the people that chose to live in SRO hotels.

Nicole, a new resident at the New Jackson hotel, walks through the lobby. Residents at the New Jackson tend to match the building in its unsettledness. Everyone and everything looks timeworn. However, Nicole is different. She stands out from the ever-present Gaussian blur that is the New Jackson haze. It's an unintentional filter that is no doubt a mixture of fluorescent and incandescent light. She's in her twenties, white and alone. Filled with wanderlust and difficult home life, Nicole rode the rails to the Pacific Northwest. After seeing the countryside from boxcar, Nicole was soon back in Chicago pan handling for food, stalled in Chicago living at the New Jackson.

Doors down the narrow hallway at the Ewing Annex hotel are frequent and the flicker of light from televisions reveals a kind of peepshow arcade bawdiness. The vista of closed doors with hidden life behind them: hacking coughs, moans, and laughter. The Ewing Annex hotel is situated just outside Chicago's central business district. This section of Clark Street is a living-history museum, a sort of skid row Colonial Williamsburg, where you can travel back in time to a day of jackrollers, gandydancers, day laborers and bottle gangs. Here this is no act. People here don't feign their plight. The Ewing is a cage or cubicle hotel where men live in 7x5x7 foot rooms that are topped with chicken wire A fifteen-dollar a night room better be at the end of that steep darkened stairway, if not, the knee buckling walk back down almost confirms a night on the Chicago's streets. Frank's door at the Ewing is slightly cracked and he seems relaxed lounging back on his bed watching television with his headphones, despite a military grade knife within arms length. His room has the typical set up that most long-term resident utilize: flat screen television, crockpot, microwave and dresser. Frank has been at the Ewing for nearly ten years and like all at the hotel he is summoned not by name but by room number. Frank was married to a schoolteacher and has two children that have completed college. Frank worked for an automotive manufacture, as well as Marshall Fields department store. Frank is now Room 104, both in name and residence.

In the fall of 2012, rumors at the New Jackson were afoot. Evidently residents of the hotel witnessed men with tape measures, measuring and calculating throughout the hotel. The commotion seemed more methodical and institutional and less improvised then the New Jackson had seen in the past. The only thing carefully calculated at the Hotel in recent memory was collecting monthly rent and placing the money in the till. For these strangers in all their tabulating meant that the New Jackson would be forever transformed: Never to charge thirty dollars a night again. The fate of Roark's home for the last ten years, the New Jackson hotel didn't seem to register for him. There was no panic, stress in his voice. Just before hanging up the phone, Roark indifferently mentioned his pending surgery.

Unfortunately, the utter incongruity of these spaces standing in the shadows of new, sleek housing developments has seemingly caught up with residents and owners alike. I entered the lobby of the New Jackson hotel one last time. Roark's baritone laugh was absent and he looked grey and tired. He was scheduled for open-heart surgery, and this would be his last night at what has been his home for the last ten years.

Dignity and pride is not evident at SRO hotels like the New Jackson. From the street level this type of housing is nothing short of "luxury homelessness." These antique structures represent a style of housing that harkens to Chicago's skidrow era. These are relics of when the bottle gangs congregated on street corners along West Madison street, unemployed and looking for "spot-work". As SRO owners cave under increased pressure from alderman, developers and the community, the question that remains: where will these people go? In 2013 over 116,000 people in Chicago were homeless which accounted for a 10 percent increase from 2012. As Chicago last remaining SRO hotels shuddered their residents disappear further into the margins... invisible.

In November, Roark E. Moody died following complication from open-heart surgery. In March, the New Jackson hotel finely closed its doors and has been slated to become high-end studio apartments. A few blocks away, the Ewing Annex remains open while pressure to close continues. Following a long public battle with the local Alderman, the Wilson Men's hotel is for sale, while The hotel Tokyo has been emptied of its residents and is for sale for fifteen million dollars.

DIRECTOR'S NOTE

Twenty years ago, I walked the streets of the South Loop in Chicago and noticed a fluorescent light atop a steep darkened stairway with a makeshift sign hanging-The New Ritz. There was something eerie and discordant. The people that lived there and the building itself didn't fit in. The New Ritz is now a parking lot and the people that lived there are scattered further out to the fringe of the city.