A century ago these would have been called tenement houses, but now we did a hip and cool Millennial rebrand: micro-apartments! The article spins this nicely:
The 180-square-foot (17-square-meter) room is filled with an air mattress where she, her partner and their children, ages 2 and 4, sleep. It’s also where they play or watch TV. At mealtimes, it becomes their dining room.
Boarding houses that rented single rooms to low-income, blue-collar or temporary workers were prevalent across the U.S. in the early 1900s. Known as single room occupancy units, or SROs, they started to disappear in the postwar years amid urban renewal efforts and a focus on suburban single-family housing.
Now the concept is reappearing — with the trendy name of “micro-apartment” and aimed at a much broader array of residents — as cities buffeted by surging homelessness struggle to make housing more affordable.
Wow look at all this urbanist progress!
To be clear, there’s nothing wrong with relatively small houses. Current American standards are downright absurd. But the motivating factor for downsizing shouldn’t be because of the asshole landlords jacking up rent on everything.
How small is relatively small? I live in a standard 33 square meter apartment: one room, balcony, kitchen, combined bathroom (as in, toilet, bath and washing machine in the same chamber). It’s alright, although it’s gotten cluttered over the years. I don’t, however, have any children or other relatives in the apartment (just my partner and the cat). Usually people live in the same amount of space, but with children (often multiple), grandparents and other additions. Now that gets cluttered.
On the other hand, there are new apartments being sold and rented that are 15-20 square meters. Now that’s where things get interesting. 20 or so meter apartments are what’s labeled “studio” here - means they don’t have a separate kitchen (it’s just one big chamber) and no balcony or anything. 15 and below have strange layouts, arguably closer to something like a trailer - storage space under a bed, which also serves as a sofa/chair to sit in. There’s a folding table next to the bed, which functions as both a dining table, working table and whatever else you might need a table for. There are some overview videos on YT, if you’re curious.
Now does that all sound livable? Maybe, if you’re young and single. Except they still cost an arm and a leg. So yeah. How small is relatively small?
I live in an 18 sq meters Appartment and its totally livable for me. It is also cheap and Not those extremely expensive gentrifying Appartment complexes for “Young professionals”.
As soon as you’re Not single or have a Hobby that needs a little Bit of space you are fucked Tho.
I think you answered your own question. It’s a good question, and quite different from what I was talking about.