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>Bunkhouses/Roominghouses/SROs, I read somewhere that the lack of rooming-houses significantly contributes to homelessness. They fill a gap between an individ

>Bunkhouses/Roominghouses/SROs, I read somewhere that the lack of rooming-houses significantly contributes to homelessness. They fill a gap between an individual apartment and your car or the street. It's too bad these aren't allowed any more. I know those populations can be hard to live with, but it's better than having them live on the street.

CydeWeys 7y ago
They also made it much easier to move to a new city to try out the job market there. It's no surprise that worker mobility is at historic lows given how hard it is to even put a roof over your head in another place, especially if you don't have good credit or income.
- Klonoar 7y ago
  Seattle banning micro-unit construction is maddening, considering they're slowly creeping into SF territory with pricing.
  - h5re43ae5r4 7y ago
    Seattle is a bad example, it's cheaper relative to peer cities (with 50+ units right now under $1500 in Seattle proper), and the market isn't keeping pace with surrounding King county or even national housing prices: https://www.seattletimes.com/business/real-estate/seattle-home-prices-lower-than-a-year-ago-for-second-month-in-a-row/ https://www.seattletimes.com/business/real-estate/seattle-ho...
    - Klonoar 7y ago
      I know the units under $1500 very well, as I'm helping someone move out here who's not in tech/finance/medicine/law. That's simply not cheap enough, and micro-housing works for these people. People come to cities for economic opportunity, they need to be able to live here while getting on their feet.
- mncharity 7y ago
  > worker mobility is at historic lows Perhaps the disappearing ladder rungs of housing, occur in transportation too? Some years back, Boston-NYC intercity buses had a couple of inexpensive "light gray"-market companies go mainstream. They were attacked by incumbents, federal and local politicians and law enforcement, and press. Leaving now gray-market buses for "illegals" pushed to the city periphery, and a (now somewhat more competitive) middle-class mainstream. With a gap in between, where working poor might commute, bridging the two labor markets. It seemed that price point and use case was too socio-politically vulnerable to be viable.
  - selimthegrim 7y ago
    Uh, did you ever ride one of those Fung Wah type buses? They were terrifying even before the spontaneous combustion trend started.
    - mncharity 7y ago
      For years. I'm sorry you had a bad experience. I found Fung Wah, in cleanliness and operations, perhaps a lower class of service than then dominant Greyhound's local equivalent. Unsurprising in a low-cost provider. As for "trend"... it seems naive now, but I was surprised then not so much by competitive PR weaponization of press narrative, but by the unprofessional sloppiness with which the press indulged in the "Chinese bus" narrative. The point "lower class of service" is perhaps key. As with flop/cage/SRO. A "yuck" service, serving people with little pull, perhaps tends to "bad thing - gone now".
  - ghaff 7y ago
    Mega-bus still seems to be pretty cheap. Maybe it's higher during high-demand periods but it seems to be less than $20 or so.
    - mncharity 7y ago
      Good point. "Leaving now^W some years later". And midweek Lucky Star can now be $15. I don't know what gray market is - perhaps still $5-ish? So a narrower gap than there used to be. For labor mobility, perhaps a difference that still matters for commuting on minimum wage. Exploring a possible job. Geographically broadening one's social support network.
Mountain_Skies 7y ago
Thus motivation to outlaw these accommodation types likely was based on them being centers of prostitution, drug use, drunkenness, and other vices. But the underlying issues weren't address so the naive belief that doing away with these places would do away with the social issues proved to be wrong. It made them worse by moving them out onto the streets while erecting a barrier to those trying to climb back up the socioeconomic ladder.
- lonelappde 7y ago
  It wasn't naive, it was hateful disregard for the needs of the poor and working classes.
pharke 7y ago
It could even be the driving cause behind the cycle of homelessness, mental and physical health problems and addiction are often the result of or severely aggravated by living in such deprivation. It's nearly impossible to get a job without a fixed address and proper facilities for daily hygiene. I'd imagine that a communal living environment would also have pro-social effects since there is an expectation to keep yourself and your space clean and meals would take place in a shared eating area. As others have pointed out, rooming houses weren't only for the dispossessed. They were a low rung on the ladder for young people trying to make a start, for people between jobs or starting over in a new city, for the vulnerable escaping bad marriages, for new immigrants and the elderly without support systems. It's interesting that this list closely mirrors the precarious stages and situations in life that can often lead to homelessness.
- chrisdhoover 7y ago
  There was a long essay in the New York Review of Books way back in the mid ‘90’s that argued the point. SROs and casual labor are essential to combat homelessness. We lost SROs but we also lost casual labor. Business are criticized for not providing full time positions with benefits. The idea that someone could walk in and get day work helps folks who really don’t want to or can’t work full time.
  - novok 7y ago
    The new casual labor is the gig economy, slowly being chipped away for the gig economy laborer's 'own good'. Roomates in a SFH / Apartment are the new SROs, but they definitely have higher barriers.
    - vkou 7y ago
      Most of the users of the gig economy doesn't want homeless people driving them around, or walking their dog, or cleaning their home. The gig economy is not a good replacement for the full spectrum of casual labour.
      - 7y ago
Spooky23 7y ago
It’s better if you’re not stuck next to them. SROs are havens for drug addicts and prostitution, with a mix of indigent elderly. It’s incredible that they would be put forth as a cure for a social ill. You know what would help these cost problems? Incentivize companies to place workers in Cincinnati or Harrisburg instead of only working in 5 cities. IBM is the old days used to be able to rule the industry from places like Binghamton, NY and Minneapolis. The current scenario is ridiculous.
- PopeDotNinja 7y ago
  I lived in an SRO in SF for 5 years. It was definitely the lowest rung on the housing ladder. I climbed out of homelessness and stayed there. For others, it was there last stop on the way down before losing it all. I remember one older woman who got evicted. Late at night she'd sneak into the building and walk up the stairs when the front desk clerk was distracted. She'd go to the 2nd floor, walk into a end floor bathroom, and lock the door for the night. Imagine being 70-something and having to play games just to have a chance at sleeping in a small bathroom with an often nasty toilet. Other stores include a 20-something woman I knew died of a drug overdose, my short-term house guest who was a raging alcoholic with no survival skills, the meth head who offered her services on a regular basis, the strippers who wanted my ADHD meds... So many stories.
  - rsync 7y ago
    Thank you for sharing your personal stories - appreciated. I, also, lived in what might be described as a pseudo SRO for about nine months in 1998/99. I witnessed similar things. I'm not sure where these (SROs) should exist or how many of them we should have but it is completely reasonable and judicious to heavily regulate them and keep them out of neighborhoods where personal and familial status has reached a higher level of development.
    - PopeDotNinja 7y ago
      Personally I don't have a problem with poor people living right next to rich people. I think the more we isolate ourselves from each other, the more we lack empathy for each other. Having been homeless, my personal experience is that people who haven't been homeless don't get it at all. The first night I had to think about where to put my stuff, I realized I was not prepared to deal with that.
mrfusion 7y ago
Would this include hostels? Those are still around. Usually they have a strict limit on how many nights you can stay though.
- 4ntonius8lock 7y ago
  No, hostels have limits < 30 days. SROs? (I'm not familiar with the word in english) are generally for people living full time. Many have minimums of > 30 days.
  - thaumasiotes 7y ago
    > No, hostels have limits < 30 days. I've lived in a hostel for months at a time. At one point an employee mentioned their monthly rate (not advertised; I was paying by the night).
    - 4ntonius8lock 7y ago
      I stand corrected. I should have said: "< 30 days... As far as I know, the majority of hostels in most large metropolitan cities where rents are expensive and therefore lower income normal people might choose to forego having a kitchen/bathroom". At least that was my experience many years ago when I was younger and stayed in hostels in NY, LA and a couple of other places where they had explicit signage that clarified the point.
- shkkmo 7y ago
  On many places in the US hostels require proof of non-residency (an out of country passport or a long rang transportation ticket...etc)
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tomjakubowski 7y ago
SROs abound in downtown Los Angeles, many converted old hotels. Some are run by non-profits. https://www.kcrw.com/news/shows/greater-la/no-kitchen-shared-bath-low-income-dorm-living-fills-a-housing-gap/what-its-like-to-live-in-an-sro https://www.kcrw.com/news/shows/greater-la/no-kitchen-shared...
jpindar 7y ago
They are allowed in some places. There are some near me in New Hampshire, and there are some in New Jersey (or at least there were a few years ago).
hutzlibu 7y ago
"It's too bad these aren't allowed any more. " It is a mystery to me anyway, how people can seriously have those laws (and much more) while considering themself to be in the land of the free. Now sadly the rest of the world is not necessarily better with this (for example the cologne cathedral, everybody is very proud of it, but I read even government officials admitted that today you could not build such a monument again, due to building regulations), but at least they usually don't claim to be and lead the land of the free.
Noos 7y ago
They were allowed, you could find them in many of your local YMCAs. The flip side being the YMCA became the place where those people hung out, though.

CydeWeys 7y ago

They also made it much easier to move to a new city to try out the job market there. It's no surprise that worker mobility is at historic lows given how hard it is to even put a roof over your head in another place, especially if you don't have good credit or income.

Klonoar 7y ago
Seattle banning micro-unit construction is maddening, considering they're slowly creeping into SF territory with pricing.
- h5re43ae5r4 7y ago
  Seattle is a bad example, it's cheaper relative to peer cities (with 50+ units right now under $1500 in Seattle proper), and the market isn't keeping pace with surrounding King county or even national housing prices: https://www.seattletimes.com/business/real-estate/seattle-home-prices-lower-than-a-year-ago-for-second-month-in-a-row/ https://www.seattletimes.com/business/real-estate/seattle-ho...
  - Klonoar 7y ago
    I know the units under $1500 very well, as I'm helping someone move out here who's not in tech/finance/medicine/law. That's simply not cheap enough, and micro-housing works for these people. People come to cities for economic opportunity, they need to be able to live here while getting on their feet.
mncharity 7y ago
> worker mobility is at historic lows Perhaps the disappearing ladder rungs of housing, occur in transportation too? Some years back, Boston-NYC intercity buses had a couple of inexpensive "light gray"-market companies go mainstream. They were attacked by incumbents, federal and local politicians and law enforcement, and press. Leaving now gray-market buses for "illegals" pushed to the city periphery, and a (now somewhat more competitive) middle-class mainstream. With a gap in between, where working poor might commute, bridging the two labor markets. It seemed that price point and use case was too socio-politically vulnerable to be viable.
- selimthegrim 7y ago
  Uh, did you ever ride one of those Fung Wah type buses? They were terrifying even before the spontaneous combustion trend started.
  - mncharity 7y ago
    For years. I'm sorry you had a bad experience. I found Fung Wah, in cleanliness and operations, perhaps a lower class of service than then dominant Greyhound's local equivalent. Unsurprising in a low-cost provider. As for "trend"... it seems naive now, but I was surprised then not so much by competitive PR weaponization of press narrative, but by the unprofessional sloppiness with which the press indulged in the "Chinese bus" narrative. The point "lower class of service" is perhaps key. As with flop/cage/SRO. A "yuck" service, serving people with little pull, perhaps tends to "bad thing - gone now".
- ghaff 7y ago
  Mega-bus still seems to be pretty cheap. Maybe it's higher during high-demand periods but it seems to be less than $20 or so.
  - mncharity 7y ago
    Good point. "Leaving now^W some years later". And midweek Lucky Star can now be $15. I don't know what gray market is - perhaps still $5-ish? So a narrower gap than there used to be. For labor mobility, perhaps a difference that still matters for commuting on minimum wage. Exploring a possible job. Geographically broadening one's social support network.

Mountain_Skies 7y ago

Thus motivation to outlaw these accommodation types likely was based on them being centers of prostitution, drug use, drunkenness, and other vices. But the underlying issues weren't address so the naive belief that doing away with these places would do away with the social issues proved to be wrong. It made them worse by moving them out onto the streets while erecting a barrier to those trying to climb back up the socioeconomic ladder.

lonelappde 7y ago
It wasn't naive, it was hateful disregard for the needs of the poor and working classes.

pharke 7y ago

It could even be the driving cause behind the cycle of homelessness, mental and physical health problems and addiction are often the result of or severely aggravated by living in such deprivation. It's nearly impossible to get a job without a fixed address and proper facilities for daily hygiene. I'd imagine that a communal living environment would also have pro-social effects since there is an expectation to keep yourself and your space clean and meals would take place in a shared eating area. As others have pointed out, rooming houses weren't only for the dispossessed. They were a low rung on the ladder for young people trying to make a start, for people between jobs or starting over in a new city, for the vulnerable escaping bad marriages, for new immigrants and the elderly without support systems. It's interesting that this list closely mirrors the precarious stages and situations in life that can often lead to homelessness.

chrisdhoover 7y ago
There was a long essay in the New York Review of Books way back in the mid ‘90’s that argued the point. SROs and casual labor are essential to combat homelessness. We lost SROs but we also lost casual labor. Business are criticized for not providing full time positions with benefits. The idea that someone could walk in and get day work helps folks who really don’t want to or can’t work full time.
- novok 7y ago
  The new casual labor is the gig economy, slowly being chipped away for the gig economy laborer's 'own good'. Roomates in a SFH / Apartment are the new SROs, but they definitely have higher barriers.
  - vkou 7y ago
    Most of the users of the gig economy doesn't want homeless people driving them around, or walking their dog, or cleaning their home. The gig economy is not a good replacement for the full spectrum of casual labour.
    - 7y ago

Spooky23 7y ago

It’s better if you’re not stuck next to them. SROs are havens for drug addicts and prostitution, with a mix of indigent elderly. It’s incredible that they would be put forth as a cure for a social ill. You know what would help these cost problems? Incentivize companies to place workers in Cincinnati or Harrisburg instead of only working in 5 cities. IBM is the old days used to be able to rule the industry from places like Binghamton, NY and Minneapolis. The current scenario is ridiculous.

PopeDotNinja 7y ago
I lived in an SRO in SF for 5 years. It was definitely the lowest rung on the housing ladder. I climbed out of homelessness and stayed there. For others, it was there last stop on the way down before losing it all. I remember one older woman who got evicted. Late at night she'd sneak into the building and walk up the stairs when the front desk clerk was distracted. She'd go to the 2nd floor, walk into a end floor bathroom, and lock the door for the night. Imagine being 70-something and having to play games just to have a chance at sleeping in a small bathroom with an often nasty toilet. Other stores include a 20-something woman I knew died of a drug overdose, my short-term house guest who was a raging alcoholic with no survival skills, the meth head who offered her services on a regular basis, the strippers who wanted my ADHD meds... So many stories.
- rsync 7y ago
  Thank you for sharing your personal stories - appreciated. I, also, lived in what might be described as a pseudo SRO for about nine months in 1998/99. I witnessed similar things. I'm not sure where these (SROs) should exist or how many of them we should have but it is completely reasonable and judicious to heavily regulate them and keep them out of neighborhoods where personal and familial status has reached a higher level of development.
  - PopeDotNinja 7y ago
    Personally I don't have a problem with poor people living right next to rich people. I think the more we isolate ourselves from each other, the more we lack empathy for each other. Having been homeless, my personal experience is that people who haven't been homeless don't get it at all. The first night I had to think about where to put my stuff, I realized I was not prepared to deal with that.

mrfusion 7y ago

Would this include hostels? Those are still around. Usually they have a strict limit on how many nights you can stay though.

4ntonius8lock 7y ago
No, hostels have limits < 30 days. SROs? (I'm not familiar with the word in english) are generally for people living full time. Many have minimums of > 30 days.
- thaumasiotes 7y ago
  > No, hostels have limits < 30 days. I've lived in a hostel for months at a time. At one point an employee mentioned their monthly rate (not advertised; I was paying by the night).
  - 4ntonius8lock 7y ago
    I stand corrected. I should have said: "< 30 days... As far as I know, the majority of hostels in most large metropolitan cities where rents are expensive and therefore lower income normal people might choose to forego having a kitchen/bathroom". At least that was my experience many years ago when I was younger and stayed in hostels in NY, LA and a couple of other places where they had explicit signage that clarified the point.
shkkmo 7y ago
On many places in the US hostels require proof of non-residency (an out of country passport or a long rang transportation ticket...etc)

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

tomjakubowski 7y ago

SROs abound in downtown Los Angeles, many converted old hotels. Some are run by non-profits. https://www.kcrw.com/news/shows/greater-la/no-kitchen-shared-bath-low-income-dorm-living-fills-a-housing-gap/what-its-like-to-live-in-an-sro https://www.kcrw.com/news/shows/greater-la/no-kitchen-shared...

jpindar 7y ago

They are allowed in some places. There are some near me in New Hampshire, and there are some in New Jersey (or at least there were a few years ago).

hutzlibu 7y ago

"It's too bad these aren't allowed any more. " It is a mystery to me anyway, how people can seriously have those laws (and much more) while considering themself to be in the land of the free. Now sadly the rest of the world is not necessarily better with this (for example the cologne cathedral, everybody is very proud of it, but I read even government officials admitted that today you could not build such a monument again, due to building regulations), but at least they usually don't claim to be and lead the land of the free.

Noos 7y ago

They were allowed, you could find them in many of your local YMCAs. The flip side being the YMCA became the place where those people hung out, though.