Category: Rooming Houses

Tolerated invisibility

16 November, 2012 (10:35) | Government, Homelessness, Housing, Innovations, Local issues, Paris, Regulation, Rooming Houses, Supportive housing |

By:David A. Smith   Homelessness is a failure; on that everyone can agree.  But whose is the failure, and whose the responsibility to address it?  The question lies, unasked, underneath a surprisingly snippy Economist article:   Jean, a 31-year-old homeless man at Canal Saint-Martin, Paris   Down and out in Paris   The inventor of [...]

Entrepreneurial barracks: Part 2, the furious future?

17 July, 2012 (10:08) | Apartments, Cities, dormitories, Entrepreneur, hostels, Hotels, Housing, Innovations, Rental, Rooming Houses, San Francisco, Tenure |

[Continued from yesterday's Part 1.]   By:David A. Smith   Yesterday’s post introduced us, via an aren’t-they-clever little story from the New York Times, so some enterprising young Californian women who’ve started running a chain of white-collar crash pads for aspiring tech entrepreneurs who’d eschew eating and sleeping altogether if they could, and if they [...]

Entrepreneurial barracks: Part 1, the blithe present

16 July, 2012 (11:41) | Apartments, Cities, dormitories, Entrepreneur, hostels, Hotels, Housing, Innovations, Rental, Rooming Houses, San Francisco, Tenure | 1 comment

By:David A. Smith   Look – over in Silicon Valley.  It’s a hotel!  It’s a rooming house!  It’s an apartment!   No, it’s … Superdorm?   Whatever this unusual living accommodation is, it’s serving a need and creating a business, as revealed in this gee-whiz article from the New York Times:   Crammed Into Cheap [...]

Out of zoning’s straitjacket: Part 3, the future begins tomorrow

16 December, 2011 (13:23) | Apartments, Condominiums, Configuration, Finance, Homelessness, Hotels, Innovations, Rooming Houses, Zoning |

 By:David A. Smith   [Continued from yesterday's Part 2 and the preceding Part 1.]   By the end of yesterday’s post, using a perceptive New York Times article from Michael Kimmelman, we have demonstrated that New York City’s zoning codes (and, for that matter, all of America’s) are hopelessly antiquated relative to the effervescent variety of American households and [...]

Out of zoning’s straitjacket: Part 2, nothing like the present

15 December, 2011 (13:15) | Apartments, Condominiums, Configuration, Finance, Homelessness, Hotels, Innovations, Rooming Houses, Zoning |

By:David A. Smith   [Continued from yesterday's Part 1.]   Yesterday’s post used a New York Times article (whose author, Michael Kimmelman, repeatedly hints that he realizes the story should be about more than the simple case of one interesting SRO in the Bronx) to launch an exploration of the invisible tyranny of zoning and [...]