In this thread the term “flophouse” is thrown around quite a bit. I’m putting the question in GQ because I’d like to hear only about places you’ve actually seen, or know first-hand to exist.
Does it mean a place like a crack house, where there are just mattresses thrown about on the floor? Or is it like a cheap hotel, with defined rooms and doors with locks? What differentiates that from a cheap hotel or a hostel?
Thanks!
Flophouses historically have been cheap, run-down urban hotels that cater to alcoholics, druggies and down-and-outers in general.
My high school was across the street from one (the Luxor Baths in Manhattan). Derelicts used to hang out on the balconies in good weather to hear our school orchestra play.
The key word is “historically”, as the term comes up regularly in references to movies and life several decades ago it seems fairly rare currently. I doubt if those type places are very economically viable now–considering city and state regulations on one hand and the limited income of the potential clientele. Instead the clientele (if they can’t afford normal housing) are either in homeless shelters, cars or homeless.
It’s a place where soccer players go to retire. 
I think of the term in reference to a halfway house, where people without money or job prospects can have a chance to get back on their feet, following incarceration, substance abuse treatment, dealing with mental disorders, etc.
My brother went into what I would call a “flophouse” when he was out of money, no job, and dealing with mental issues. They accepted his food stamps (I think) as payment. He got a bunk in a room with a few other men, and the place had counseling programs for helping people re-integrate with the community. Very tough job for the people who work and organize that outfit. Kept my brother from having to sleep under an overpass.
I think Jackmannii’s definition is also valid.
The polite modern term for a flophouse is an SRO (Single Room Occupancy) residential hotel. In San Francisco we have a number of SROs that are used by people who are down and out. Thye tend to get in the news when landlord/tenant issues arise, or when one is purchased and closed and there is concern for the residents.
And here’s an article that was published just last week about San Francisco’s Vanishing SROs, although apparently there are still 530 SROs in the city, which sounds like a large number to me.
Jackmannii’s definition is most historically accurate.
You may remember in “The City on the Edge of Forever” Star Trek original series, that Edith Keeler, (who must die), asks Kirk and Spock, “Do you have a flop?” and they don’t understand, and she explains that it is a place to sleep.
Flophouse is the cheapest possible form of hotel before you end up sleeping under a bridge.
Earliest cite in OED is 1923 but the term flop with the same sense goes back a little earlier.
Here are the entries for flop and flophouse.
No one here will be able to tell you anything personally, because flophouses pretty much don’t exist anymore, now that there are fire laws and occupancy laws.
Basically, someone who owned a big building in a poor part of town would cram it full of narrow bunks, and for very little money, homeless people could rent a bed for a night on a first-come, first-served basis.
A few women might sweep up during the day in exchange for their bed, and once a month or so, the sheets and blankets would get washed and hung to dry. The owner (or manager) might solicit volunteers among the population to help with that chore in exchange for a free bed for a night.
A bed might cost five cents. In the morning, there might be coffee for a penny for those who had stayed the night. In general, they didn’t really offer anything in the way of breakfast, though.
Imagine if a homeless shelter were unregulated, so they crammed as many bunks in as they physically could, and had no cleanliness standards, and charged something very minimal to stay there, with none of the other charitable services homeless shelters have, like vouchers to take the bus to a soup kitchen, or help getting appointments with social services, or rehab programs. No showers. They just rented you a bed, and that was it. Maybe also a bedpan under the bed, just to keep people from peeing directly on the floor.
They were pretty nasty places, but better than sleeping in they alley when it was cold or raining.
If you read a lot, you read about them a lot.
YMCAs were established mainly as a cleaner, safer alternative to flop houses, but you had to be sober, and you had to listen to a sermon or two. In big cities, YMCAs still have (tiny) rooms to rent on a daily basis to people who are essentially homeless. But in most of the US, “Ys” are just a type of gym franchise.
Not so fast.
When I left home for NYC back in 1964, I arrived at the bus station late at night, and spent the night in a nearby flop house. I had my own room, which consisted of a bed that was smaller than a twin, and about a foot of space between the bed and the opposite wall. The walls were metal, painted battleship gray, and seemed to amplify every sound. There was a bare light bulb in the ceiling that was always on. There was a communal bathroom and shower. It couldn’t have cost more than a buck or two.
I have no idea who the other occupants were, or why they were there. I was there to get some sleep and take a shower. Luckily I got a job the next day, and I was given an advance, so I could move “up” to the Y.
All in all, those were good days.
In the UK, we had (have) doss houses. Back in the 60’s I spent a single night in one - I got a voucher from the then ‘unemployment’ office, which got me a soup and bread dinner, a narrow (probably ex army) bed with a single blanket in a dormitory of twenty or so. I slept in my clothes, and was advised to put the feet of the bed in my shoes, or they would be gone in the morning.
Breakfast was tea and a thick slice of bread and margarine.
Did you see the “The Blues Brothers”? Think Elwood’s hotel.
The Plymouth Hotel. “Vagrants Welcome.”
“How often does the train go by?” asks Jake. “So often you won’t even notice it,” Elwood responds
Here in the greater Pittsburgh area they still exist. Many of these ratty, decaying former milltowns have dive bars that feature the word “hotel” or “inn” as part of their name. Rooms are, in fact, available to rent cheaply and without the awkwardness of a lease. Accommodations are minimal. Your fellow lodgers are likely to be chemically active sorts.
As the grapevine has it, the Marcellus Shale drilling boom has caused such establishments in other parts of the state to drive out their previous lodgers so that they can let the rooms at much higher rates to drillers.
Places like that were in operation up through the 80s. I had friends who came to New York and lived in the Kenmore, on 23rd Street. And there were others. They all seem to be gone now. I guess the real estate would generate more money if put to other uses.
Really old doss houses (like the ones where some of Jack the Ripper’s victims dossed) didn’t have cots. They were narrow tunnels with a bench along the wall. A rope would be stretched along its length so that people would sit sleeping with their forearms on it. Both George Orwell and Anthony Burgess sampled these accommodations.
With a large grain of salt, here’s my understanding of the terminology.
Back–way back–in the day, a “flop” was a place to sleep. A flophouse wasn’t merely a seedy hotel, but the sort of place where several people would sleep in the same “room”, which might just be a partitioned section within a larger space. It wasn’t the sort of place where you had your own room, like a regular hotel, and I imagine that in many cases the paying guests had to provide their own bedrolls. I doubt if it’s legal to operate such places these days.
A seedy hotel, or “fleabag” is a step above that and provides individual rooms and beds for guests. As an example, in L.A. the Rosslyn has descended to this level despite its opulent origins over a century ago.
Some people might say flophouse when they mean any bad hotel, but a flophouse, if any still exist, is the worst of the worst.
Since I was the one that started the throwing: Jackmanii’s description was what I intended:
“SRO hotel” is the modern term (or was in the 90s). I think I picked up “flophouse” reading MAD Magazine in the 70s.
This has a special meaning in Chicago, of course. I’ve ridden the El while visiting there and it’s strange to say the least, the way the window you’re seated next to passes within inches of somebody’s apartment window. I can’t imagine how it must be to live in those places.
In Manhattan, a lot of what USED to be flophouses… er, “single room occupancy hotels,” eventually booted out their transients, cleaned up, and started trying to rent to yuppies.
I’ve heard the term six Dollar hole in the wall to describe them. The cheapest I’ve ever seen is a hostel at about $15/night. But those seem a lot less seedy. I assumed they were abolished from he reasons other have given. Nobody wants a bunch of diseased, mentally ill, homeless addicts congregated together. Plus the real estate wold earn more doing other things.
Ignorance fought. Thanks everybody!