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Census forms don't reach SRO hotel residents

Here's the detailed two-step process one elderly woman living at the single-room occupancy hotel at 866 Commercial Alley in San Francisco's Chinatown followed to make her mailbox:

1. Eat Kix cereal.

2. Nail empty Kix cereal box to doorway.

"Isn't it nice?" she asked wryly as she smiled at the finished product Friday.

The woman is one of an estimated 19,000 people who live in residential hotels in San Francisco but do not receive individual mail service, under U.S. Postal Service policy.

Instead, carriers deliver a clump of mail to a residential hotel's front office, often leaving the residents to fish for their personal correspondence.

For an address like 866 Commercial Alley, with 91 units and hundreds of residents, a daily mound of mail arrives six days a week. Sometimes one resident takes it upon him or herself to play the building's mail carrier, dropping pieces into the homemade mailboxes.

Other times, people don't pick up mail fast enough, so it gets thrown out, or the less commendable swipe an envelope that suggests the contents may be a check or credit card.

Greater urgency

On Friday, outside the Chinatown hotel, City Attorney Dennis Herrera said his legal effort to force the Postal Service to deliver to individual residents carried greater urgency now that people are being asked to fill out the 2010 U.S. Census forms. Advocates said many residents of SRO hotels hadn't gotten their surveys and now run the risk of going uncounted.

"If there were any justice," said the Rev. Norman Fong, deputy director of the Chinatown Community Development Center, "everyone would get their mail delivered to them, not just the wealthy."

Herrera's office sued the Postal Service in May, arguing that residential hotels often house newly arrived immigrants, veterans or senior citizens, who risk losing important legal documents or Social Security checks without individual mailboxes.

Herrera noted that people who live in residential hotels in downtown high-rises receive personal mail delivery.

"If the USPS can deliver to residents at the St. Regis Hotel," Herrera said, "they can deliver to the residents of this hotel, too."

James Wigdel, a spokesman for the San Francisco branch of the Postal Service, said in an e-mail, "I cannot comment because of the lawsuit filed against the Postal Service by the city attorney, except to say that the U.S. Postal Service has denied liability in this case."

Herrera said attorneys in his office have met twice with mediators and Postal Service representatives in the past few months to settle the issue, but with no resolution.

"We're continuing on with this in court," he said. "We're going to be aggressive about it because it is not just about the law, it's about the personal stories: people whose SSI (Supplemental Security Income) checks go missing, people who miss a personal letter from a loved one."

Herrera said attorneys in his office had heard from census workers that the federal surveys were getting lost in the mix.

'More hurdles'

Jade Wu, a census outreach worker who is walking door-to-door to count residents in Chinatown, said mail carriers often dropped the census forms in the lobbies and hallways, and the surveys never found their way to residents.

"This makes more hurdles for the counters," Wu said.

Jeff Buckley, director of the Central City SRO Collaborative, said his group supports the city attorney's office and hopes the residents will be accurately counted.

"There's a dignity of being counted and being recognized," Buckley said. "We really appreciate how they've stuck their necks out for the residents."

E-mail Justin Berton at jberton@sfchronicle.com.

This article appeared on page C - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle