Today, city officials say the solution to the housing crisis involves building many more of them.
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Councilman Erik Bottcher, a Democrat who represents parts of Manhattan, is expected to introduce a bill that would allow, for the first time in decades, the construction of new single-occupancy apartments measuring just 100 square feet.
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The legislation, supported by the Department of Housing Preservation and Development, would make it easier to convert commercial buildings into these types of housing, also known as SROs.
Apartments can resemble dormitories or suites and can become cheaper options in one of the most expensive cities in the world.
“We are trying to make housing more affordable and create more supply,” said Ahmed Tigani, acting commissioner of the housing department.
These apartments, where kitchens and bathrooms are often shared, can cost $1,500 or less in neighborhoods like Bedford-Stuyvesant and Clinton Hill, where median rents easily top $3,000 a month.
The movement highlights how an extreme housing shortage has led to a shift in attitudes towards forms of shared housing, which have long been a controversial element in cities around the world.
Cities like London, Zurich and Seoul, South Korea, hungry for affordable housing, are exploring similar ideas, as are other parts of the United States. Other cities, such as Hong Kong, still face difficulties in making this housing habitable.
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Few cities, however, have their history as intertwined with this type of housing as New York. A population boom in the first half of the 20th century led to thousands of people cramming into cheap boarding houses, single rooms and SROs.
About 30,000 to 40,000 remain, compared with more than 100,000 in New York City at the beginning of the 20th century, according to a 2018 study by NYU’s Furman Center. But such housing has become associated with poverty, overcrowding and unsanitary conditions.
The city passed laws preventing the construction of new units and the division of residential buildings into SROs, leading to their steady decline over the decades.
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“Overcrowding, overcharging, and the creation of slums that breed disease and crime were the direct result of this conversion practice,” said Mayor Robert F. Wagner in 1954 upon signing one of these laws.
An aide to a City Council committee said at the time that the growth of SROs would “reduce New York City to cubicle living.”
In a way, now that’s part of the idea.
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The obvious benefit, officials say, is that SROs and other shared housing would be cheap. But they could also better adapt to the city’s changing demographics.
The number of single-person households grew by almost 9% between 2018 and 2023, according to official data. The number of homes where people live together without forming a family — for example, roommates — grew by more than 11% in the same period.
Because of the housing shortage, many people end up grouping together to rent larger homes for families, said Michael Sandler, the department’s associate commissioner. Building new shared housing could free up these apartments.
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He said that today there are several companies that present themselves as “co-living” providers and operate in a “gray” and unregulated legal area.
For example, they may own a building or a few units and rent individual rooms to people in a shared suite, but the tenants have no formal contracts and cannot, by city regulations, do routine things like install locks on the room doors.
Legislation expected to be introduced Tuesday would also improve certain safety standards for shared housing, such as allowing a maximum of three units per kitchen or bathroom, Sandler said. It would also require sprinklers and an adequate supply of electricity to operate small appliances in each room.
Allowing new shared housing could provide options for young singles; homeless people; seniors and new city residents, officials said.
“These are not the SROs of the past,” Bottcher said. “These are modern, flexible and well-managed homes that can meet the needs of a diverse population.”
Still, single-occupancy housing may not be a perfect solution, said Paul Freitag, executive director of the West Side Federation for Senior and Supportive Housing, a nonprofit that operates a shelter and three SRO buildings on the Upper West Side built before the laws changed.
He said they are not ideal for seniors, who may not want to share bathrooms and may find the limited space difficult to move around.
Freitag said many people end up staying longer in shelters waiting for kitnets or one-bedroom apartments, rather than moving into SROs. His group plans to convert its current buildings into larger apartments.
“I think it’s a very challenging environment to grow old in,” he said.
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