Home is a Hotel

From within the walls of their 80 sqft SRO hotel rooms, a diverse group of San Franciscans strive against systemic forces and a housing crisis with hope and humor in their search for a place to call home.

Synopsis

Across America, cities are struggling with homelessness and housing affordability. How does one decades old solution – cramped Single Room Occupancy units – impact the lives of those who live in them? Home Is a Hotel takes you inside San Francisco’s SRO housing through intimate portraits of their residents filmed over six years. This character-driven, verité documentary immerses viewers in what it means to call a single room home in the heart of one of America’s richest cities. It’s the story of an immigrant single mom in Chinatown, a blind songwriter fighting harassment and eviction, an ex-couple in recovery co-parenting a six-year-old son, a graffiti artist who paints murals for the tech companies gentrifying his neighborhood, and a determined mother on a quest to find her runaway daughter all of them trying to better their lives within the four walls of rentals as tiny as 80 square feet.

Kevin Wong (Director, Producer, Co-Cinematographer)

HOME IS A HOTEL is Kevin’s feature debut and was supported by Sundance, SFFilm, and The Center for Asian American Media among others and premiered at the 2023 SF International Film Festival. The short film which inspired HOME IS A HOTEL won several awards including the Loni Ding award for social justice documentary and Best Short Documentary at Cinequest. His other Non-Fiction films have played at festivals across the country including Bigy Sky, SFFilm and Cinequest, and been featured on PBS and in The Washington Post. His narrative films include “Forgetting,” an adaptation of an episode of WNYC’s Radiolab, and “Jus Soli” a Sci-Fi Thriller about immigration and data privacy starring Lynn Chen.

He is a former Sundance Humanities Sustainability Fellow, SFFilm Filmhouse resident, and BAVC Media Maker fellow.

Kar Yin Tham (Co-Director, Producer)

Kar Yin Tham is an independent filmmaker based in San Francisco and Kuala Lumpur. Working both in narrative and documentary films, she’s helped produce projects that have won awards at film festivals nationally and internationally, including Best Short (Adrift in Sunset) and Best Narrative Feature (Collisions). Kar Yin co-directed and produced Home is a Hotel, which won the audience award for Best Feature Documentary, and the juried award for Best Bay Area Documentary at the 2023 SFFILM Festival. Alongside creative pursuits, she has an established career in the nonprofit sector, most recently as the talent development and diversity, equity, and inclusion lead at a national organization.

Website: https://homeisahotel.com/

Trailer:

Host or Publisher Emory University Center for Ethics