San Francisco, a city of pretty significant wealth and modest geography, has a housing problem. One proposal to address the issue is to amend the housing code to allow apartments as small as 220 square feet: that’s a room roughly 15 feet by 15 feet, complete with kitchen, bath, and a bed. I’ve seen small houses that are actually pretty cleverly designed, and there seems to be a trend among hipsters and others to live in as small a space as possible. Proponents of the code change argue that small units will open up new space for people who have been priced out of the rental market.
However, I think this is actually a terrible way to deal with a city’s housing problem.
As much as I hate to sound like a conservative, the problem in San Francisco is a market failure. Due to very strong rent control laws, perhaps up to 25,000 rental units in San Francisco have been taken off the market. The shortage of rental units both limits supply and encourages owners to charge as much as they can possibly get away with for new rental units, knowing that over time, rents will not keep up with inflation.
I think the idea of building tiny apartments to address the housing shortage is a mistake. Housing shouldn’t be a race to the bottom: let supply and demand work, and odds are that rents will start to normalize. Moreover, I think allowing tiny units will aggravate the housing problem faced by the working poor: do we really want affordable housing in a city to be barely larger than a prison cell?
I read that and wondered, how does the size of those apartments compare to small mobile homes? Many persons in the Western US that work boom and bust jobs like mining and the like live in small mobile homes in small towns and seem to survive just fine.
If someone choses living in a tiny apartment, in a location they can’t otherwise afford, why do you care? Do you object to people that rent just a room in someone elses house?
I’m all for this. Let the market decide if tiny apartments in an expensive location will beat out larger apartments in a less desirable site. And are you sure that the only ones interested in these are the working poor? How about someone with a horrendous compute, who decides to rent essencially a room, and just drive “home” on the weekends??
I don’t see that tiny housing units need to be “the bottom”–who says they can’t be well-designed? And in a city with lots of public amenities and cultural life, some people don’t need or want spend much time there anyway.
That, too. I had a similar situation myself for a while. The commute wasn’t even that awful, in itself, but the hours were long and the pay was good, so it made sense for a while.
It’s cool, as long as they’re priced accordingly. I wish there were more affordable housing options like this by me. Available studios get snapped up SO quick, and they’re the only thing I could possibly mangle my budget around. I don’t need or want a 1-bedroom place. I wish I had the option to live in the tiniest studio apartment ever with a tiny kitchenette and tiny bathroom. I’d call it my bathroomette.
First you complain about regulations depressing apartment rents. Then you complain about a proposal to lift one of those burdensome regulations–the minimum legal square footage. If developers want to build tiny units, and renters want to live in them, that’s the free market at work. If apartments that small really are unlivable, then no one will rent them and no one will build them. It’s called capitalism.
Or students, or other young people setting out to find the bright lights of the big city. That sounds about the size of a dorm room, and students tend to eat out or get take away food a lot anyway.
I live in a seasonal resort town. In the winter, many people - some with children - live full-time in motel rooms. The town seems to be OK with that.
My only concern would be that older buildings with a lot of individual rooms tend to be firetraps, but I’m sure the city has thought of that and written their building codes accordingly.
A single-wide seems to be around 900 square feet, so about three or four of these apartments could fit in one mobile home.
I would call that a failure for his policy. If housing is in short supply, building micro apartments so wealthy people can have an additional crash pad will not relieve the housing problem.
I wouldn’t call it “the free market at work.” I would call it a band-aid on a broken market. A fix to the broken market - that is, changes to the rent control law - would probably free up ten thousand rental units. A change in regulations will change the market far more and far faster than building new mini apartments possibly could.
By thinking that mini apartments can ease the housing problem in a large city, one fools oneself into ignoring the underlying problem: rent control regulations will increasingly make things worse over time, not better.
Why should people have to accept stripped-down services and products simply because dumb rules make it so that’s all they can afford?
It sounds like you’re assuming if rent control went away then rental prices would naturally be adjusted (lowered) through increased supply? Probably not in a city like San Francisco. What you’d get instead is the same low level of supply in a city where low and mid income people can no longer afford to live. Do away with rent control and only very rich people could afford to live there but there are plenty of those waiting in line for a place in SF. You’d also lose a lot of what makes the city an exciting place to live.
Wrong. Revise rent control and you increase the fluidity of the market. Rent control has the same effect as limiting property tax increases under Prop 13: punish the middle class by stratifying housing into very cheap rents for longtime residents, and very high rents for new renters.
There is an analog here to health care reform. Conservatives think that lousy, cheap health plans are needed so the poor can have insurance. Others recognize that the system is totally screwed and works against the interest of all consumers, and understand that you can’t put a band-aid on a broken system.
We need to realize that laws that are supposed to protect renters from the market and fact-of-life cost increases actually hurt everyone.
I think the first step should be to get rid of rent control. Trying to band-aid a market solution onto something that isn’t really a market is just more government interference in people’s lives. One has to wonder how much demand there would be for tiny apartments if the market was freed up. Not everyone can live in SF.
I lived in a 10’ x 30’ mobile home for a while. That comes out to less than 300 square feet when you add in counters, walls, and a closet. It wasn’t bad, but I jumped at the chance for a 10’ x 60’ when I got the chance. Stayed there eight years.
Anyway, I could see living in 200 square feet as possible, but cramped. The mobile homes I rented were in an almost resort-like situation and went for $195/month including water. I imagine the tiny apartments mentioned would be similar to a college dorm room with bath and kitchenette. The possible rent mentioned for them- well, I’m glad I won’t have to live there.
Tiny apartments of that type are common in France, particularly in Paris. They are known as chambres de bonne, are usually located on the top or bottom floors of older buildings and at one time would have been servants’ or nanny’s quarters for the well-off families that lived on the middle floors. My then-girlfriend was living in one when I met her. It was pretty minimal (electric ring for a stove, bathroom down the hall) but eh, she didn’t hate it, and it was a cheap way to live in a fairly hoity-toity part of town (the 16th arrondissment). Definitely more attractive for young folk just starting out, though.
Japanese college students and recent hires often live in what are called “1R” or “1K” (one room/kitchen) apartments. For those, 220 sq. feet would be on the large side; many are 175 or less.
I’ve never lived in one myself but visited a number of friends who did. They’re not bad. They’re not great, either, but it’s large enough for a single person to live.
That said, the rent for a 1R/K is nothing like the “$1,200 to $1,700” suggested in the link. Even in downtown Tokyo we’re talking <$500 a month.
Getting rid of rent control will not suddenly create affordable housing for all who want it. Yes, rent control is a bad idea now that we have mass transportation. But there is always going to be high demand for housing in San Francisco. We can either reduce demand by making commuting from far away more attractive or we can increase supply by making taller earthquake-proof buildings and smaller living units (and getting rid of the market distortion of rent control). Or we could do both.
Noone has a right to live in the city. How do you choose hich poor people get to live in rent control housing? I don’t know how they do it in SF but in NYC its hereditary. You can literally pass down your rent control housing to your kids and grandkids.
There would still be demand for tiny apartments. If they can pull off what they do in some parts of Asia, they will also be attractive as pied a terres
The students and new hires live in pretty poor places. Many people who are working a little longer will in $700 to $900 range for something a little larger the 220 sq. ft.
I’ve lived in one for a while and you get used to it.
