Boston’s Micro-Apartment Experiment Continues

Asthma Khalid examines the initial response to micro-apartments by residents of the city of Boston. The initial market for the apartments was brisk, but additional units have been slow to materialize.

Khalid quotes several knowledgeable sources in the story. First is Tom Acitelli, founding editor of the real estate blog Curbed Boston: “They got them in New York, they got them in San Francisco, they got them in Seattle. They can work here. And this sort of panacea approach that’s been offered, that they are the 21st-century solution to a city like Boston’s housing crunch is ridiculous.” 

Kairos Shen, director of planning at the Boston Redevelopment Authority, also expresses hesitation that the model could solve the city’s housing shortage, but also described the units as popular among developers: “We now have lots of developers who want to develop these small units, and they’re thinking about creating micro-units, not innovation units, per se, to maximize the yield of the units that they’re able to get in a development.”