NYC's Rental Market Returns to the Single Room Occupancy Model of a Century Ago

New York City's rental market "is moving toward a rent-by-the-room model," according to an article by Kim Velsey, as "a response to the imbalance between New York’s large single population and the prohibitively high cost of living alone, and, perhaps not coincidentally, a model that thrived in the last century."

"Although only buildings zoned for single room occupancy, or S.R.O.s, can rent by the room, the market has increasingly found ways to legally — and not so legally — accommodate those seeking rooms rather than apartments," explains Velsey.

"Alternatives range from relatively low-cost apartment shares, wherein brokers represent apartments with multiple bedrooms and help renters find roommates to bring the cost per person down to as low as $650 a month, to luxurious, all-inclusive shared suites in co-living developments, where rooms are priced at as much as $2,900 a month," Velsey adds.

The article includes multiple anecdotes of renters navigating the new/old rental market, and some of the new business models and development models that have sprung up in response to the need for affordable rental housing.

The article also includes details of the rooms-for-rent model of New York's past. It was only the end of World War II, for instance when rooms-for-rent hit a peak in the city at 200,000 available units (currently the city has 35,000 SROs). Luminaries such as Grace Kelly, Liza Minnelli, and Joan Didion all once lived in one particular famous example of a SRO boarding house—the Barbizon Hotel.