THIS is how you get truly affordable market-rate housing in an expensive city

[mhays]

How do you get truly affordable market-rate housing in an expensive city, without subsidy? Micros! I mean real ones, like 70-200 sf, often with kitchen and sometimes even bathroom down the hall.

In other words, like the SROs of yesteryear, or the dorms and small hotel rooms of today.

Seattle is days away from finally allowing micros down to 70 sf, pending the mayor's signature on what the council passed unanimously on Tuesday. This follows state legislation where any apartment zone that allows apartments of six+ units must also allow congregate housing like I describe (the 70 sf figure is because any bedroom has to be at least that size) and count each bedroom as 1/4 of a unit in density calculations. Other cities will follow statewide.

What do other cities allow? Similar? I assume at least college dorms are allowed to be tiny, but what about units in private developments?

We allowed similar units in a brief period a decade ago via a loophole that saw each "cluster" as one unit. Before the loophole was closed we got 3,600 units in short order, often under the "Apodment" brand. These filled up quickly, yet today Apodments start around $800 with sizes down to 103 sf.

Lately, the smallest Seattle allows is 220 sf (SEDUs, or small efficiency dwelling units), but even that is more often 280+ sf due to the required multiple sinks and the geometries involved. We get tons of those and they're somewhat affordable but cost hundreds more.

Puget Sound Business Journal
Apodment
Legislation as passed Council

[mhays]

Let me add a few points.

A 100 sf bedroom in a congregate building isn't for everyone. But how many people would rather have that than two roommates, mom's basement, a 90-minute commute with a car they can't afford, or a homeless shelter?

Typically it's singles too of course.

Also consider that in a great city (not that Seattle is great yet), much of the street life is due to the neighborhood being part of your home, so you don't have to have your own copy of everything. This is why Paris has a coffee shop culture for a notable example.

[JManc]

What's to stop these things from turning into the SRO's of the past? The rents are just low enough for the riff-raff to be able to afford them which could eventually turn off their target market (upwardly mobile GenZ'ers) from wanting to live there. It's one thing to live in a sketchy apartment building but you don't have to share bathroom and kitchen areas with your neighbors.

[mhays]

The main issue with old SROs was that they weren't up to modern fire codes. These are.

I'm sure shared kitchens can get messy, but if you wash the shared stuff before using it or keep a few items of your own (plate/silverware/pan) you'll be fine. Roommates in a normal apartment wouldn't be much different except here the bedroom locks.

[pdxtex]

Portland has a few buildings like this. I dunno, 200 sq ft is probably my bare minimum. Ive got a psycho cat and collection of bikes so that'll be my retirement pad. Id be more excited if these could be garden cottages or little apartments like that.

[Wigs]

In the future Robot Arms apartments will satisfy all humanoid needs.

I'm sorry I can't take 70sqft seriously. You should have to live in one for a year for making that suggestion

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[Steely Dan]

^ Yeah, 70 SF (8'x9') is a little too close to a prison cell for my sensibilities.

I guess it's better than sleeping on the street, but maybe our society needs to reorder itself a bit if a person who puts in a solid 40 hours of work a week (doing whatever) can only obtain 70 SF to call their own.

[lio45]

Originally Posted by mhays

The main issue with old SROs was that they weren't up to modern fire codes. These are.

I'm sure shared kitchens can get messy, but if you wash the shared stuff before using it or keep a few items of your own (plate/silverware/pan) you'll be fine. Roommates in a normal apartment wouldn't be much different except here the bedroom locks.

Good SROs don’t have shared kitchens. Each room has running water and a sink, a fridge-freezer (at least a small one), and means of cooking (at least a 2-burner “hot plate”). The only shared things are bathrooms (toilets + showers) and the laundry area. Tenants’ dirty dishes do not impact anyone else :p

The idea of SRO isn’t the same as roommates in an apartment that was not designed for roommates. The “units” in a SRO building are more autonomous than that.

[mhays]

70 sf is only the law, not necessarily what gets built. In any case, why shouldn't people have even cheaper options? If they can't afford 100 sf, they deserve an underpass? (My guess is that size isn't common though I don't have stats.)

SROs came in a variety of sizes and types, some without plumbing. For example the Blues Brothers and Coming to America had SRO units without bathrooms or kitchens. Maybe kitchens were rare...the assumption might have been that residents would eat the landlord's food (at rooming houses) or the greasy spoons often associated with cheap apartments in older pop culture.

Dorm rooms down to 100 sf have historically houses TWO students, with bathroom down the hall and often no kitchen at all.

[JManc]

The shared bathroom though.

Waiting to take a shower but Bob in unit 5 down the hall ate street tacos and Voodoo donuts last night after a night out drinking Jell-O shots, Dos Equis and White Claws has been turning the bathroom into a level 3 biohazard for the past 25 minutes. Hard pass....

[mhays]

Chat GPT says SROs of the early 1900s typically did not have bathrooms or kitchens.

[3rd&Brown]

I think there's a high correlation between the disappearance of SROs and homelessness in our core cities. I'm all for them.

I can make nearly any space work...I'm pretty creative...but to me an ideal space would be an L shaped situation where even it it was one room, it would create the sense of two different spaces. You could tuck your bed in one zone and your living space in another. Add a private bathroom and a very small built in kitchenette with a small refrigerator, sink, and microwave, and I'd be quite content.


Cooking proper meals could be done in a shared kitchen. You could probably do this comfortably in about 240 square feet per room.

[mhays]

PS, most micros will include bathrooms of their own. The brand I linked says they all have bathrooms and kitchenettes.

I've stayed in hotels and hostels like this, though not for very long. Some had bathrooms down the hall, and others were just tiny rooms or bunks in shared rooms. One was four months but it was over 200 sf.

[JManc]

I think these things would work for someone starting out in a new city and don't have a lot of possessions and will spend most of their time away from home; a doctor working on their internship and residency but can't see how this setting would be ideal for more than a year. I stayed in an ADU in the Bay Area that was around 250 s/f and I started to get squirrely after a few months and spent most of my free time out and about exploring the area.

[mhays]

Here's a plan set for a building in early 2014 when our loopholes existed. It has 49 units on six floors (183-215 sf, not counting the lofts on the top floor(s)), three kitchens, two stairs, and no elevator. No parking but these never have any. The kitchenette has the one sink, not the bathroom, except in the larger units.

I suspect the solution in 2024+ will be similar, though I don't know the rules for elevators.

https://web.seattle.gov/dpd/edms/GetDocument?id=2014758

[JManc]

^ "sleeping unit" sounds so dystopian.

[TWAK]

Truly affordable? Manufactured homes.
Are those allowed in cities?

[mhays]

Land and hookups mean those would be expensive in an expensive city.

[dchan]

As we can see from the posts here, even an urban-leaning online forum is decided American (or Canadian) in sensibility. That is, the living area becomes the "everything space" for the occupant.

[Wigs]

Originally Posted by mhays

Dorm rooms down to 100 sf have historically houses TWO students, with bathroom down the hall and often no kitchen at all.

That's not what they typically build anymore, since the past 25 years in most of North America anyway. Dorms now are typically 2-4 bedroom units with 1 bathroom and a kitchen area.

You're no longer sharing a bathroom/shower area with the entire floor. And have an actual fridge and stove.

My point: many college/uni students aren't living like students of yore, and this is on campus housing.