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In L.A.’s Skid Row, the hotels and brothels fell into disrepair, many becoming single-room occupancy, or SRO, apartments that were the bottom rung of the city’s housing stock.

But as late as 1971, when a Times writer spent a week living in an SRO hotel room on 5th Street in Skid Row, rooms were still available for $2.50 a night, and for those who couldn’t afford it, there were all-night movie theaters where people could doze through old B-movies for 75 cents.

The urban revival in downtown L.A. produced 12,000 new homes but most were high-end apartments or lofts, and SRO hotel units continued to decline.

SRO Housing Corp., a similar nonprofit landlord operating 30 supportive housing buildings with a large presence in Skid Row, has documented its financial challenges for years.

“People exit treatment after a 90-day Medi-Cal program and they get placed into an SRO where everybody around them is still using drugs. If you’re trying to be clean and sober in that environment back in that same neighborhood in Skid Row or the Tenderloin, it’s next to impossible.”