In NYC, there are still rooming houses, where a either a person rents individual rooms in their house to people, or the owner (who doesn’t live there) rents each bedroom and use of the kitchen and bathroom to people who have no connection to one other. ( Different from roomates, because with roomates either a few people decide to rent an apartment together, or one person rents an apartment and finds suitable roomates. In the rooming house, other residents have no say in who the other rooms are rented to. Very large padlocks on the outside of the bedroom door are not unusual) Neither kind would be listed in phone books. You find them under “Rooms for Rent” in the real estate section or by word of mouth. I imagine the board part has disappeared mainly because the people who rent these rooms now have regular jobs and can’t provide that level of service.
Looking at it from the supply side, is it also possible that there are few older women who must depend on the income of tenants? Nowadays, if a lady has the time and energy to cook and clean for a house full of men, she could probably just as well go get a full time job, possibly something with benefits. Having a big empty house tends to happen later in life, I would imagine that today more women are back in the workforce by the time they reach empty-nest-hood, assuming they even left work the first place.
It’s the cases of the little old ladies that kill and steal from their clients that seems to stand out in my mind.
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Zombies wandering around the SDMB boardinghouse again.
Closed.
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