Photo Story: Living, aging — and staying — in San Francisco

Longtime resident of the Tenderloin reflects on life in a changing neighborhood

Thomas Byrd, a passionate R&B piano player, reflects on his love of music inside his tiny room in the Tenderloin. The room is filled with musical instruments, old vinyl records and posters of his favorite musicians. (Photo by Felix Uribe / CatchLight Local Fellow)Thomas Byrd talks with the front desk clerk at the West Hotel SRO on Eddy Street in San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood, where he lives. “Some people have been here for 20 years in rooms, some of them smaller than a jail cell,” Byrd said. (Photo by Felix Uribe / CatchLight Local Fellow)Thomas Byrd walks into his room on the fourth floor of the West Hotel, a single-room occupancy hotel in San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood. (Photo by Felix Uribe / CatchLight Local Fellow)Thomas Byrd grew up in the Haight-Ashbury and has many memories of the “Summer of Love,” when music was everywhere. His love of music is evident in his SRO in the Tenderloin. (Photo by Felix Uribe / CatchLight Local Fellow)Thomas Byrd refers to the single-room occupancy (SRO) building as a “standing room only” hotel due to the small size of its living spaces. (Photo by Felix Uribe / CatchLight Local Fellow) Looking down from his fourth-floor window onto Eddy Street, 61- year-old Thomas Byrd can see the flint-hard effects of gentrification and poverty any time of the day or night.