Micro-apartments are back after nearly a century, as need for affordable housing soars
Every part of Barbara Peraza-Garcia and her family’s single-room apartment in Seattle has a double or even triple purpose.
By Hallie Golden And Claire Rush
Every part of Barbara Peraza-Garcia and her family’s single-room apartment in Seattle has a double or even triple purpose.
The 180-square-foot (17-square-meter) room is filled with an air mattress where she, her partner and their children, ages 2 and 4, sleep. It’s also where they play or watch TV. At mealtimes, it becomes their dining room.
It’s a tight squeeze for the family of asylum seekers from Venezuela. But at $900 a month —more than $550 less than the average studio in Seattle — the micro-apartment with a bare-bones bathroom and shared kitchen was just within their budget and gave them a quick exit from their previous arrangement sleeping on the floor of a church.
“It’s warm. We can cook ourselves. We have a private bathroom. It’s quiet,” said Peraza-Garcia, whose family came to the U.S. to escape crime in Venezuela and so she could access vital medication to combat cysts on her kidney. “We can be here as a family now.”
Boarding houses that rented single rooms to low-income, blue-collar or temporary workers were prevalent across the U.S. in the early 1900s. Known as single room occupancy units, or SROs, they started to disappear in the postwar years amid urban renewal efforts and a focus on suburban single-family housing.
Now the concept is reappearing — with the trendy name of “micro-apartment” and aimed at a much broader array of residents — as cities buffeted by surging homelessness struggle to make housing more affordable.
“If you’re a single person and you want a low-cost place to live, that’s as cheap as you’re going to get without trying to find a subsidized apartment,” said Dan Bertolet, senior director of housing and urbanism for the non-profit research center Sightline Institute.
The Pacific Northwest is a leader in the resurgence of this form of affordable housing. Oregon last year passed a bill opening the door for micro-apartments and Washington state lawmakers this year did the same, starting to clear red tape that for years has limited construction of the tiny units, which are about a third the size of an average studio apartment.
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