A table to eat and write on: the joys of a studio flat - The Guardian (blog)
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AppId is over the quota AppId is over the quota There are currently 800,000 more one-person households in New York than there are studio and one-bedroom apartments. Photograph: Joe Raedle/Getty Images The heroine of Loitering with Intent, Muriel Spark's comic novel about the writer's life in 1949 London, is very proud of her one-room dwelling. It has everything Fleur Talbot needs: "A gas ring for cooking, a bed for sitting and sleeping on, an orange box for food stores and plates, a table for eating and writing on." She observes with amusement the reaction of a rich visitor who can't find anything to say except: "Compact, compact, it's really … it's really … I didn't know they had this sort of thing." They did, and they do. A search of Craigslist London shows an assortment of tiny rental flats, some with en-suite bathrooms (not an amenity Fleur was familiar with), washer/dryers, and a concierge service. They are minute, it's true – no amount of creative photography can conceal the proximity of the beds to the stoves or indeed the toilets. But they are also, for the most part, reasonably priced, ranging between £150 and £200 a week. If you're scoffing at the idea that these prices are reasonable, you haven't lived in New York City lately. Renting a decent place here has always been exorbitant but has lately become closer to impossible for all but the very rich; as in London, the financial crash has forced people who'd otherwise buy into the rental market, causing vacancy rates to drop to an all-time low. This means even run-down closets are apt to get snapped up before you can even fill out a rental application. And adding to the problem, at least for single people, is that very few of these apartments were built with one-person households in mind. Zoning regulations meant to prevent landlords from chopping small apartments up into even smaller ones may have prevented enough studios from being built. There are currently 800,000 more one-person households in New York than there are studio and one-bedroom apartments. Decent studios in NYC seem as much an urban legend as alligators in the sewers; everyone has a friend of a friend of a friend who totally saw one once. If and when you do find them, they're often almost as expensive as one-bedroom apartments, which seems to defeat the purpose of their existence. Single New Yorkers have long chafed at the bad maths that means they're sometimes paying twice the rent their coupled-up friends pay; couples can pool their resources and get a nicer place. There's even a term for the premature commitment that casual daters sometimes enter into when they're spurred mostly by the impulse to get away from flatmates: such couples are "Brooklyn married". "Brooklyn divorces", needless to say, are incredibly common. This week New York's billionaire mayor, Michael Bloomberg, caused an uproar when he announced a design competition for a building in Manhattan's square but convenient Kips Bay neighbourhood that will be comprised solely of what he's calling "micro-apartments" – spaces of 250-300 sq ft that will rent at market rates and thereby be a test for future zoning changes. The intention is to create a "new model for development of affordable housing". Estate agents estimate that the units will be rented at "less than $2,000" a month. For an apartment that's only six times larger than a cell at Rikers, this still seems steep, but that's just the tip of the iceberg as far as criticism goes. If micro-apartments catch on, they may well usher in zoning changes that will lead landlords to be able to rent smaller and smaller spaces while still charging whatever the market will bear. Some people may well still prefer living with flatmates to living in a pod. There's also the problem that poor and middle-income families may actually be hurt by the creation of micro-pods for yuppies; they may end up paying proportionately higher rent for larger spaces because of micro-units raising prices in their area. But especially for women who are the modern-day equivalent of Fleur Talbot – young strivers for whom independence is paramount and cohabitation, either with flatmates or a boyfriend, is unthinkable – it's easy to see how a micro-unit might be just the thing. It's harder to romanticise living in such a dwelling in NYC – a Londoner can live in a bedsit and be reminded of Fleur and her ilk, but a New Yorker might be apt to think of SROs – but not impossible; in order to survive here, you have to develop the ability to romanticise just about anything. • Follow Comment is free on Twitter @commentisfree View the original article here
http://bit.ly/QqxLXS
AppId is over the quota AppId is over the quota There are currently 800,000 more one-person households in New York than there are studio and one-bedroom apartments. Photograph: Joe Raedle/Getty Images The heroine of Loitering with Intent, Muriel Spark's comic novel about the writer's life in 1949 London, is very proud of her one-room dwelling. It has everything Fleur Talbot needs: "A gas ring for cooking, a bed for sitting and sleeping on, an orange box for food stores and plates, a table for eating and writing on." She observes with amusement the reaction of a rich visitor who can't find anything to say except: "Compact, compact, it's really … it's really … I didn't know they had this sort of thing." They did, and they do. A search of Craigslist London shows an assortment of tiny rental flats, some with en-suite bathrooms (not an amenity Fleur was familiar with), washer/dryers, and a concierge service. They are minute, it's true – no amount of creative photography can conceal the proximity of the beds to the stoves or indeed the toilets. But they are also, for the most part, reasonably priced, ranging between £150 and £200 a week. If you're scoffing at the idea that these prices are reasonable, you haven't lived in New York City lately. Renting a decent place here has always been exorbitant but has lately become closer to impossible for all but the very rich; as in London, the financial crash has forced people who'd otherwise buy into the rental market, causing vacancy rates to drop to an all-time low. This means even run-down closets are apt to get snapped up before you can even fill out a rental application. And adding to the problem, at least for single people, is that very few of these apartments were built with one-person households in mind. Zoning regulations meant to prevent landlords from chopping small apartments up into even smaller ones may have prevented enough studios from being built. There are currently 800,000 more one-person households in New York than there are studio and one-bedroom apartments. Decent studios in NYC seem as much an urban legend as alligators in the sewers; everyone has a friend of a friend of a friend who totally saw one once. If and when you do find them, they're often almost as expensive as one-bedroom apartments, which seems to defeat the purpose of their existence. Single New Yorkers have long chafed at the bad maths that means they're sometimes paying twice the rent their coupled-up friends pay; couples can pool their resources and get a nicer place. There's even a term for the premature commitment that casual daters sometimes enter into when they're spurred mostly by the impulse to get away from flatmates: such couples are "Brooklyn married". "Brooklyn divorces", needless to say, are incredibly common. This week New York's billionaire mayor, Michael Bloomberg, caused an uproar when he announced a design competition for a building in Manhattan's square but convenient Kips Bay neighbourhood that will be comprised solely of what he's calling "micro-apartments" – spaces of 250-300 sq ft that will rent at market rates and thereby be a test for future zoning changes. The intention is to create a "new model for development of affordable housing". Estate agents estimate that the units will be rented at "less than $2,000" a month. For an apartment that's only six times larger than a cell at Rikers, this still seems steep, but that's just the tip of the iceberg as far as criticism goes. If micro-apartments catch on, they may well usher in zoning changes that will lead landlords to be able to rent smaller and smaller spaces while still charging whatever the market will bear. Some people may well still prefer living with flatmates to living in a pod. There's also the problem that poor and middle-income families may actually be hurt by the creation of micro-pods for yuppies; they may end up paying proportionately higher rent for larger spaces because of micro-units raising prices in their area. But especially for women who are the modern-day equivalent of Fleur Talbot – young strivers for whom independence is paramount and cohabitation, either with flatmates or a boyfriend, is unthinkable – it's easy to see how a micro-unit might be just the thing. It's harder to romanticise living in such a dwelling in NYC – a Londoner can live in a bedsit and be reminded of Fleur and her ilk, but a New Yorker might be apt to think of SROs – but not impossible; in order to survive here, you have to develop the ability to romanticise just about anything. • Follow Comment is free on Twitter @commentisfree View the original article here
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