Home alone in Gotham: when all you can afford is tiny dwellings

How prohibitive is it to live solo in NYC today vs. 20 years ago? As remote work & high prices have hollowed out part of the activity in Manhattan, we follow different people living in tiny quarters while trying to get by in the city.

Manhattan hasn't returned to pre-pandemic activity levels for commuter work, but the shift didn’t translate into cheaper living, and rents remain prohibitive.

The long-lasting reality of micro-apartments in New York shows that the need for entry-level housing has remained high over the decades. But the current lack of affordability may affect young-age emancipation —and empty-nesters' ability to downsize into smaller living quarters near vibrant city centers.

In 1965, there were about 100,000 single-room occupancy units (SROs) in the city. But over the following decades, developers began to convert them to larger units, and today, it's estimated there are just 3000 apartments in New York City under 400 square feet.

Over the years, we've interviewed many living in spaces as small as 78 square feet. These are smaller than current minimum size standards but grandfathered in as a reminder of a time when creating affordable housing for those with limited incomes, primarily recent immigrants, was paramount.

During the course of our documenting tiny apartments in New York, the city recognized the need for smaller, more affordable spaces and eliminated the 400-square-foot minimum size standard. Today, zoning still requires at least one room of 120 square feet, and this doesn't include a kitchen, bathroom and closet.

TIMELINE:

0:30 Kirsten lived in a shared apartment in the Village near Washington Square Park 20 years ago (4 bedrooms, 1 bath, 1 kitchen);
1:00 Housing has become more expensive in NYC
1:15 Felice Cohen's microapartment 15 years ago
1:51 Alaina Randazzo recent microapartment (which she thought was Felice Cohen's original microapartment; it's not).
2:30 Are microapartments permanent solutions?
3:30 Residence hotels and boarding houses in the early 20th-century.
5:05 Alex Verhaeg's current microapartment in Manhattan;
9:50 Some small apartment renovations have had a big public impact, like Graham Hill's APT-1 renovation in SoHo.
11:33 revisiting Luke Clarke Taylor's "shoebox apartment" in Hell's Kitchen (2011); Luke and Kirsten/*faircompanies were featured on a NYT's article back then, Gulliver Seeks Rental https://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/21/ny...
13:30 The trend of transforming furniture and micro apartments in Manhattan.
14:00 all spaces in micro apartments have become functional with the addition of transforming furniture.
20:00 Where is the trend of micro-apartments headed?
21:30 Michael and his wife, retired empty-nesters, go against the trend by moving into a smaller place with transforming furniture in the city.

Alex Verhaeg:    / @abonaax;     / stmarksshorty  
Nikki Espina:   / nicole.espina  
Alaina Randazzo:    / @alainarandazzo;     / alainarandazzzo  
Felice Cohen: https://www.felicecohen.com/
Luke Clark Tyler: http://www.fieldissuedesign.com/
Graham Hill: https://www.thecarbonauts.com/

On *faircompanies:
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