SROs for Hipsters?

So, you wanna live alone, but you don’t quite have enough cash? There’s now a 21st century arrangement that harks back to tenement days: your own apartment (kitchenette sometimes included), with shared bathroom or other facilities down the hall. That’s what the kids are doing these days, reports the NY Times. It’s part roommate situation, part SRO, but for the cultured class. “In recent years, as rental prices have gone up and up, students and young professionals have become more willing to live in rooming houses or other dorm-like arrangements,” they write. “Young people have been willingly choosing to live in such places for several years.” Of course, some of these SRO buildings are actually, you know, SROs. “Many apartment buildings that require this kind of intimate cooperation have rough reputations that make them unappealing beyond the practical inconvenience of sharing a shower with half a dozen strangers,” they write. “Single-room-occupancy buildings (rooming houses with six or more units) are often used as supportive housing for people coming out of homelessness or rehabilitation programs. Others are a landing pad for new immigrants. Some are quite grim, poorly run and badly maintained.” One that doesn’t fit that description is inhabited by an art gallery assistant, who pays $1,450 for her own pad with kitchenette on the top floor of a South Portland Street brownstone in Ft. Greene; she showers down the hall, sharing the bathroom with a woman she describes as “10 years her senior.” Studios in the nabe apparently start at $1,600; guess private toilets aren’t worth the extra $150.
Room to Rent. Bath Nearby [NY Times]
Photo from Brownstoner Reno Blog.