should we really consider 220 square feet as acceptable? Yes. If you don't make much money but want to work in SF/NYC/Boston/etc, your only option is to spend

should we really consider 220 square feet as acceptable? Yes. If you don't make much money but want to work in SF/NYC/Boston/etc, your only option is to spend a lot of time driving/commuting from somewhere with cheaper housing. For some people, the choice to waste three hours of their life driving in traffic every day is worthwhile because they get a big house with a yard. But others would be happy to sacrifice lots of living space if it meant that they didn't have to blow 3 hours of stressful commuting. When cities declare "you can't sell a 220 sq ft apartment", they force that choice on everyone, even people who wouldn't choose it for themselves. Minimum area standards basically impose a floor on the cost of living. In some American suburbs, this is often explicitly used to keep out the undesirables; you require that each house have at least an acre of land and that the structure take up less than X% of the lot so that prices rise to the point that low income folk or recent immigrants can't afford to live in your town.