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Groth, Paul. Living Downtown: The History of Residential Hotels in the United States. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994.

This book argues that attitudes about housing--public and professional--have had devastating effects on an important supply of urban housing, downtown residential hotels. Focusing on San Francisco, the author, a professor of architecture and geography, details the history of this endangered institution, tracing decline in numbers to a nexus of attitudes and policy decisions coming from the larger society. Groth effectively illustrates that both the market and culture play a role in deciding what forms of housing are deemed legitimate and in determining how "home" is defined. While this author sees hotels as a valuable public resource and a valid alternative to traditional household culture, they have generally come to be viewed as public nuisances. In separate chapters, Groth examines four types of hotels that at one time housed people of different social ranks, fulfilling a range of social needs. By the end of the nineteenth century, however, a sizable coalition of professionals and reformers had begun targeting hotels of all types as "moral, sanitary, and economic slums," and helped establish suburban single-family houses as the ideal American housing type. Meanwhile, investors reconfigured the urban economy and the meaning of downtown, altering the hotel market, which in turn affected the crisis in low-income housing. In the book's concluding pages, Groth describes the formation of housing coalitions since 1970 that have effectively forged ties with public officials. Although he notes that changing attitudes among housing officials have led to a broader definition of "housing," which in turn has helped the cause of housing activists, Groth sees constant danger in "active ignorance," which historically has led to harmful public policies. [B. Johansen]