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The advent of micro apartments

#1
Magical Realist Offline
Could YOU live in a dorm room? Not me. I need a PRIVATE restroom, and a kitchen where I can really cook. Onion scraps and blender puree flying everywhere! I live in a studio, which suits my loner existence. But at 955.00 a month I'm not saving much..
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"Imagine living in less than 400 square feet of space, and paying top dollar for the privilege.

While hard to believe, it's becoming the norm for renters in cities across the country such as Boston, Seattle and Washington, D.C. In key metropolitan markets, those places certainly don't come cheap: In San Francisco, rent can run as high as $1,700 a month.

"It's a national issue where there's a housing shortage in dense cities, and there's just an overall general desire to live in cities," explained nArchitects Principal Mimi Hoang.

New York City, which has prohibited developers from building such tiny apartments since 1987, is looking to hop on the trend with its new My Micro NY apartment complex, which nArchitects will design.

The edifice will be a 9-story building in Manhattan that will comprise of 55 rental studios, ranging from 270-370 sq. ft. It will include amenities such as a gym, outdoor terrace and storage; roughly 40 percent of the units will be subsidized while the rest will be rented at market rate, which in new York can easily surpass $3,000 a month.
It's a pilot program that, if successful, the city hopes to replicate throughout Manhattan to help alleviate the housing demand among city dwellers battered by sky high apartment rents.

Hoang, the architect behind My Micro NY, says the problem stems from simple demographics. There is a growing population of singles, and a shortage of apartments to accommodate them.

"More and more people are living alone, and that's due to the fact that we are marrying later. We are also unfortunately divorcing more," she said....."====http://www.cnbc.com/2015/03/13/pay-top-d...ments.html


[Image: SmartSpace-SOMA-Panoramic-Interests-5.jpg]
[Image: SmartSpace-SOMA-Panoramic-Interests-5.jpg]




[Image: harriet-street-residences.png]
[Image: harriet-street-residences.png]

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#2
C C Offline
On the plus side, people living in the closet-sized apartments of many Asian cities would consider that delightfully spacious. Microapartments are usually illegal, but with a square foot of living space sometimes costing the equivalent of over $1300, necessity detours around human rights, I guess. At least "sleeping" while standing-up in those old sci-fi shows usually involved the person being in suspended animation, so that they weren't aware of any accumulating discomfort. Wink
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#3
elte Offline
I think that if my calling in life didn't require a lot of materials on hand, I wouldn't mind a 300 square foot abode. Clutter almost seems necessary for me to feel comfortable. I also need to be able to relieve myself in private whenever I want, however.
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#4
Yazata Offline
One thing that I'd like to see is Japanese-style sleeping lockers. These are basically coin-lockers more than six feet long, with a padded lower surface, lighting and ventilation and perhaps a tiny TV. That way, if salary-men get stuck in the city and miss the last train, they can rent a locker to sleep in for a lot less than a hotel room.

Cities with big homeless populations could build large numbers of them, put them in less stylish industrial areas where the bums already sleep, and give each homeless person a key to his/her own tiny space. They could store their stuff in the locker during the day, and not have to lug all their possessions around with them in backpacks or shopping carts. Provide public toilets and showers. It would be a lot cheaper than trying to find the homeless population conventional housing in very expensive housing markets like San Francisco.

Of course, there would have to be some security to prevent theft, crazies attacking others, and weird stuff happening in the bathrooms. And somebody would have to clean out the inevitable corpses that died in their lockers from drug overdoses. There would have to be periodic mandatory cleaning and vermin eradication. Maybe put a camera in each one to catch what's happening inside. (An intrusion of privacy, but beggars can't be choosers.)
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#5
Magical Realist Offline
Quote:Maybe put a camera in each one to catch what's happening inside.

That seems abit Big Brotherly to me. Are we seriously going to subject US citizens to such surveillance just because they're homeless? I know I wouldn't want the job of sitting all night in front of monitors watching homeless people sleep or occassionally pull one off while lying in their cubicles.
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#6
C C Offline
For some reason this reminds of that Seinfeld episode titled "The Checks".

Having run out of money, Kramer puts his Japanese friends up at his place, allowing them to sleep in an over-sized chest of drawers (much like a capsule hotel). Because of the humidity from the hot tub, the wooden chest warps and Kramer's guests get stuck in the drawers. Jerry, still having writer's cramp from check signing, uses a fire ax from the hallway to smash open the chest, which scares the Japanese guests. The scared Japanese tourists tell the Japanese TV executives about the incident ("Seinfeld is crazy!"), thus ruining the chances of selling the "Jerry" pilot to Japanese television.
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#7
Yazata Offline
Magical Realist Wrote:That seems abit Big Brotherly to me.

Yeah! Don't you love it? You guys love big intrusive government managing every aspect of people's lives, right?

Quote:Are we seriously going to subject US citizens to such surveillance just because they're homeless?

In exchange for free housing. Once again, beggars can't be choosers.

Quote:I know I wouldn't want the job of sitting all night in front of monitors watching homeless people sleep or occassionally pull one off while lying in their cubicles.

The best idea would be to just record it, keep it for a month and then discard it. That way, there would be evidence if rapes are reported, if somebody breaks in and steals another resident's stuff, or if the resident is using his/her locker to hide stuff they stole elsewhere.
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