Sounds interesting. I could do it but for the lack of kitchen. The article doesn’t say but is there a communal kitchen? A refrigerator is great for milk and veggies but what do you do for food? Eating out two meals a day is going to cost at least $10 a day for fast food more if you eat healthy. But that averages out to $300 a month on the low end most likely more be cause you can’t cook. Seems like you’d be better off with splitting rent a roommate and doing your own cooking.
Lotsa microwave meals…
My present motor home is about 200 s.f., but my old one was about 130. Pretty cramped. We’re living in the newer one by choice and it takes some doing.
Other than the lack of kitchen (I love cooking and freezing lunches and dinners and I love baking), sure. I’m currently in a 380 sq ft studio, though I’d say 100 ft of that is the bathroom (it’s ridiculously huge for a studio, because it’s on the first floor and thus wheelchair-accessible) that has a small but full kitchen (cabinets, pantry, stove/oven, fridge, countertop with dishwasher (that I only use to store my pots and pans).
So I’m in a 280 sq ft (minus bathroom) studio right now. I actually love it since I’m by myself* and I’d only end up spending most of my time in one room anyway. Why pay more money for another room that’d end up mostly unused?
And cleaning takes no time at all! 
- Till I get married in Oct, and we’re moving.
Sounds like a good option for folks who only need a place to shower, sleep, and study. It’d drive me nuts otherwise. Will all the units have windows? Is there any green space?
$500-$600 seems high, but not if all the utilities and broadband are included.
And it costs how much? That’s what my mortgage is.
Sounds like Tokyo to me. I will be living in a place basically that size next year. Except it will cost more and there will be one shower for 6 people. Yay!
Oops: that is the size of a parking space. No, that is really small.
My best friend actually lives in a similar apartment in Seattle. It’s just barely over 100 square feet, has a private bathroom, a single bed/sofa and a “kitchen area” consisting of a sink, an under-counter fridge and some cabinets.
She loves it. She’s single, it’s located directly across the street from her office, and it’s affordable without straining her budget. By contrast, the least expensive apartment that wasn’t of this style she could find when she was looking for an apartment three years ago was a roach-infested rathole studio in an exceptionally dodgy neighborhood (she saw two drug deals and got solicited by a hooker when she went to look at it) that started out at $875/month. Her teeny-tiny rooming-house style apartment costs her less than $600/month in a safe neighborhood with good public transit (she doesn’t drive - so good public transit is important).
She uses the combination of a microwave, hotplate, toaster oven and crock pot for cookery. Other than the lack of freezer, and the inability to do any baking that won’t fit in a toaster oven, she manages to cook at home just fine. The microwave is mounted under the upper cabinets, the toaster oven lives on the counter, and the hotplate and crock pot live in the cabinet when not in use.
It does encourage her not to accumulate random crap, but her computer’s been a laptop for years now and some creative shelving solutions gave her a surprising amount of storage space. Plus, a fair amount of her furniature doubles as storage (storage ottoman, endtables made of small dressers, etc). All in all, this kind of housing can be a really good deal for people.
No way. I’m cramped enough in my 400sqft studio.
I’m going on vacation tomorrow and opted for a lower end but not economy room. It’s a nice size. I got an economy room a couple of years ago and I hated it. It was like living in a closet. And that was just for a few days.
I could live in one of the chair accessable ones, and would need to rent one of the 8 parking spaces …
Check out Flying Beds especially the goalani … it combines some shelving, a twin bed and closet space and a pull down table …
hereis a photo essay of a housing project in Hong Kong where each room is 100 sq feet. I have to wonder why so many of them seem to store in plastic bags, when I would opt for stackable boxes or crates <shrug> I always found that commercial shelving that can take banker boxes and lots of banker boxes optimal for bulk storing of stuff that needs to be accessed moderately frequently.
I do know it would take me a while to weed through my cases of books and get them scanned in and turned into ebooks, so I would need a storage locker to store the bulk of them, and I would have to bring one case at a time home to be scanned/processed. I am also nuts in that I buy cds and dvds, and put them into binders instead of keeping them in individual boxes that just take up space.
If I were single, I could easily do it.
Sounds awful. $600 to live in a shoebox? I’ll take a nice share-house with a real kitchen, thanks.
These buildings will feature a communal kitchen, communal living space, and communal outdoor living space. If I were going to live in downtown Seattle, this is the way I would go.
There is a woman who works for my employer that lives in a 74 square foot home. It’s basically a storage shed. She takes her home with her behind her truck. This works for her because we provide showers and changing room for employees. It would not work for me…I want my own bathroom!
I have lived in a 79 square foot dorm room.
I don’t think so. I’m not a naturally tidy person, and have too much clothing. I’d prefer to pay more on rent for a kitchen and more distance from the action if need be, and live more simply in other ways.
Though if the alternative is a filthy, dangerous shithole, I’ll probably take the parking space and drop a couple bags of clothing off at the Goodwill…
Or you could, you know, not live somewhere a parking space costs six hundred bucks a month and doesn’t feature a kitchen. There’s always that.
I couldn’t do the low end of the sq. footage, but I think I could do the high end, if I had to and if I had some convenience items like a microwave and mini fridge or the like. Maybe not forever, but it could be done.
Wow. My house payment is about what they’re charging for these tiny little apartments. Remind me not to move to Seattle.