Forgive my ignorance but what does "SRO" mean? I'm not an English native speaker and google is useless for acronyms unless you have context.

Single room occupancy. A type of hotel, with shared bathrooms down the hall.

Here's an article from yesterday's NYT that has a historical background section about halfway down:

When No Landlord Will Rent to You, Where Do You Go? https://nyti.ms/33ZiTKV

SRO?

You can cook in microwaves and rice cookers, no?

Microwaves are known for making it easy to cook a complete meal for a family of four, right? Especially the small ones that are common in hotel rooms? And you have to afford a rice cooker and have a way to learn to cook with it. Maybe you have internet, but maybe your phone just broke.

Poverty simply means you live without things. I lived for some years cooking on burner plates because I couldn't afford propane/natural gas (different houses). I also didn't have hot water. If my electricity got turned off? No warm food.

There are a number of rentals that do not come with appliances. "You can use what is there, but if it breaks, I'm not replacing it" happens a lot too. Maybe you can rent one, maybe not. You can probably carry a rice cooker home if you don't have transportation, but not a microwave (easily, anyway)

Cooking a meal from fresh ingredients in a microwave seems like a pretty Herculan task to me, as someone who cooks every day

You’re on a real let-them-eat-cake roll here.