in this NewYork Times article, columnist Bob Herbert discusses the sinking economy.His first sentences are :
My question is about the kitchens.
How do you build a home/apartment without a kitchen?Who keeps statistics about them? (city dept of building permits? rent control?)
Apparently they have always existed, because the article bemoans the " RISE in the number" of such homes. Who lives/lived in them ? Is this something unique to N.York?
I have heard of renting rooms with no kitchen to students. Or occasionally a family which owns a house and rents out one of the bedrooms as a “sleeping room” , specifying with or without “kitchen privileges”.But it was pretty unusual, and would be a temporary arrangement,more like a motel. I would never have considered such rentals as “homes without a kitchen.” But then, I’ve never lived in NY.
Or is “kitchenless home” a euphamism for “homeless shelter”?
If so, it seems like a bad example of political-correctness. (And it’s illogical, too…it makes sense to speak of the sadly increasing numbers of residents in homeless shelters. But it doesn’t make sense to define the beds in those shelters as " homes with no kitchen".)
SRO (Single-Room Occupancy) dwellings have always been a part of New York City. A single room, sometimes with shared bathrooms. It’s kind of a trap for lower income people. The per night lodging is more expensive than a conventional apartment, and the lack of a kitchen means you’ve got to pay a lot more for your meals, but there’s little or no security deposit, and the utilities are included. Once you’re in one, it’s pretty hard to put together the large chunk of money you’re going to need to get into regular housing.
Some people live in motels and hotels and rooming houses all the time, or most of the time. I don’t know why they shouldn’t be considered “homes.” It’s hardly only a New York thing, regardless.
When I first moved to NYC, in 1970, I could only afford to live at the Y. Fortunately I got a job right away, and after a month I move to a furnished room on Riverside Drive. It was a great location, but I just had one furnished room and a shared bath. No kitchen.
I have no idea what Herbert means by “homes that don’t have kitchens”. It is certainly not true that there are apartments or houses without a kitchen area ( studios don’t have a separate kitchen). There are all sorts of housing situations without kitchens - homeless shelters, dorms, furnished rooms, hotels. I’m not so sure that that tells you anything about the economy- after all, if the increase is due to more colleges building and filling dorms, and more wealthy people living in hotels full time , it wouldn’t be an indicator of economic stress.
Housing units include house, apartment, mobile homes, suites of rooms, or single rooms which is occupied as separate living quarters, meaning that the occupants live separately from others in the building and that there is direct access from outside the building or from a common hallway. This includes hotel and motel rooms when occupied by those who consider the hotel or motel their residence,. It can also include rooms in rooming or boarding houses, continuing care facilities or congregate housing if the occupants live separately and have direct access, and also boats, vans, tents etc, if they are currently used as someone’s residence. These are the units which had the kitchen facilities question asked - and kitchen facilities consist of a sink with a faucet, stove/range and refrigerator located in the housing unit, although not necessarily in the same room. A hot plate , microwave or icebox don’t count.
Correctional facilities, military barracks, skilled nursing facilities, homeless or domestic violence shelters, residential treatment programs and college residence halls are examples of group quarters.
not related to New York, but its common across many countries in Asia for apartments not to have kitchens. Two reasons, street food vendors are so cheap and ubiquitious that its cheaper to eat out than cook yourself, and the local people often have to work such long hours and/or travel so far each day that they simply don’t have time to cook.
I’ve seen this in Thailand / India / Japan / Indonesia first hand experience from local friends, assume the same is true for other countries.
Only luxury apartments advertised as ‘western style’ will have kitchens.
It’s a basement apartment. At one point it was a rec room, so it has a small wet bar sink and a tiny bit of counter space. We’ve added a fridge, hot plate and toaster oven. It works okay.
I think a lot of these “no kitchen” scenarios involve creatively repurposed living spaces like mine.
I once visited a friend’s Hollywood apartment, converted from a chopped-up Whitley Heights mansion. The combination living room-bedroom was not too strange, but the combination bathroom-kitchen made one rather self-conscious about the order of one’s morning activities.
Actually that reminds me. Not that long ago I lived with a roommate in a two-bedroom (and two living room, which was nice for a roommate setup) Brooklyn apartment. We had one of two units in the 4-story building that was that size. And of course, we had a kitchen.
Across the hall from us (we took up one side of the building) were two single rooms each occupied by one person, as well as a kitchen and bathroom that were shared by the occupants of those two rooms as well as two or three (never really did get a handle on the third floor layout) residents in similar rooms on the floor below.
So all of those residents, while they had kitchen access, would have been counted as “no kitchen” under that definition.
In Paris there’s a lot of what used to be pied-a-terres that are now being rented as “studettes”, tiny studio apartments that are simply one room with a bed and maybe a desk. No kitchen, bathroom down the hallway, and most of them just have an oversized sink with a handheld shower head in suite for bathing. I imagine they’re mostly rented to students, and I’ve seen them priced at up to 550 euros a month.
The Hobbit Hole, a friend’s house in Madrid, does not have a “Cédula de Habitabilidad”, the document saying it has been registered as being livable. It’s on street level, part of a large store which has been converted into small units and these smaller (un-livable) units sold individually. The people who did the conversion put in a toilet, sink and the smallest, dinkiest possible shower in each unit, but no kitchens.
I once lived in a studio apartment (not in NYC by the way) where the “kitchen” consisted of nothing more than a tiny sink, hot plate and mini-fridge tucked into one corner of the main living area. The place was about the size of a motel room (and may even have been one at some point). I wonder if that type of set up would count as kitchenless.
Back in the 1980s, my two-bedroom teakwood house up in the North had no kitchen. The first place the wife and I had in Bangkok had no kitchen either. It’s true about how cheap picking up a meal and taking it home is.