Housing of Last Resort
The Liberty and the Baldwin

The story of the tenants of two single-resident occupancy hotels in downtown Oakland and an effort to protect affordable housing from redevelopment in the 1980s. Faced with eviction, the tenants fought back and went on strike. The interviews and photographs document the community this economically marginal group of tenants formed. These SRO’s functioned as housing of last resort, providing shelter for those with marginal incomes who might otherwise have been living on the streets. By the end of the 1980s, over a million of these units were lost and the “homeless” epidemic began.