Hacker Cinema
Caged Men: Tales from Chicago's SRO Hotels
2017 · Film · documentary · 84 min
Directed by Aaron Shipp
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 is a feature-length documentary which examines the disquieting stories of near-homeless Americans living on the margins and their invisibility in a largely indifferent and, at times, hostile community. It attempts to lend a voice to SRO residents, clerks, owners and to the hotels themselves.
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1 comment on Hacker News
As an illustration of where housing laws left SROs, I highly recommend this fantastic documentary on the last SROs in downtown Chicago - “Caged Men: Tales from Chicago's SRO Hotels” (2018). It turns out that a lot of the residents are elderly retirees… which says a great deal about how changes in housing laws can follow a generation ‘til they die.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YbjKxdfE8Q