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PaperclipPerfector  14hr ago (text post)   624 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for August 14, 2026

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You had flophouses (where nobody would stay for long if they could help it) all the way up through factory town lodgings or urban apartments.

Yes, I’m sympathetic to people who say the rent is too damn high, but the period when young people could easily rent an apartment in the big city by themselves without inherited money was very brief historically speaking - it probably lasted less than thirty years (maybe 1955 to 1985?). A century ago, your current equivalent of a modern day 25 year old corporate striver (a young clerk at a bank or insurance company, say, or a trainee typist or secretary) would have stayed in a boarding house in a small room or sharing a small room for a large percentage of their income.

SROs are a casualty of zoning and other housing regulations.

would have stayed in a boarding house in a small room or sharing a small room

It's a shame there aren't many options like that anymore. The last SRO in the city nearest me closed down in the 1970s. I couldn't even tell you about boarding houses, though I'm pretty sure it was even earlier. These days it feels like your options go from house, to apartment, to homeless shelter, to underpass, without any real stops in between.

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