For health reasons, I slept in a tent for nearly six years. Then I managed to get back into housing by renting the smallest room in a hundred-year-old SRO.
I have two adult sons. Management was like "I don't know. The room is really small." and I was like "The three of us have been sleeping in a six-by-six tent. If it's okay with you, it's okay with us."
So we had a lot more space than a six-by-six tent and access to bathrooms 24/7, which is a big deal, running water, electricity and internet 24/7 and I no longer had to be afraid of stormy weather. The room had a sink only and access to shared bathrooms down the hall and I mean at the far end of the hall. We were in the LAST room, direction-wise, with a sink only.
There were forty mailboxes, so I infer there were twenty rental units per floor on two floors. Four units on each floor were a slightly larger room with a private bath, two or three were one-bedroom apartments and the rest were "dorm" style rooms with just a sink that had to use the shared bathrooms.
So likely around thirteen or fourteen rooms per floor had a sink only and there were two public bathrooms per floor. When I first moved in, this was clearly a problem.
You routinely had to wait to access a bathroom but I grew up in a big foodie household and we EAT, which is not the norm for poor people it seems. The longer we lived there, the less we smelled drugs in the building and the more we smelled food cooking and the less drama there was surrounding trying to access a bathroom. The lines largely disappeared.
I have very serious health issues and I frankly did NOT want a private bath of my own when I first moved into the building. I didn't want to have to CLEAN it. I was too sick to deal with stuff like that.
For me at the time, a room with a sink only and shared bathrooms down the hall that someone else cleaned was EXACTLY what I wanted. It was a feature, not a bug, that my first rental unit in that building had no private bathroom.
We eventually moved into one of the larger rooms with a private bath, which had its good points and bad points.
Some thoughts:
Thirteen or fourteen rooms with sink only and with one or MORE people apiece in them is too many rooms for sharing TWO bathrooms per floor.
I did not hesitate to use bathrooms on either floor, which got me looked at funny by other residents who seemed to feel like you could ONLY use the bathrooms on YOUR floor.
I don't see any reason why the rooms need to EITHER have a sink only OR have a full bath. If some rooms had a half bath (sink plus toilet) or three-quarters bath (sink, toilet and shower only, no tub) that would reduce demand on the public bathrooms while still making them relevant and necessary for MOST rooms, most of the time. Also, if you have a full bath and more than one person living in your unit or YOUR unit in specific is having plumbing issues, it's nice to be able to go down the hall to the shared bathrooms.
I am envisioning a situation where there are some rooms with sink only, some with a half bath, some with a three-quarter bath and some with a full bath. If you divide twenty rooms per floor by four different types of rooms, you get five of each type unit.
At least in theory.
Maybe the pilot project would look like that and maybe there would be a way to test demand for the different kinds of rooms and maybe we would find that there is very high demand for three-quarter bathrooms and less for sink only or some such and adjust the number of each type room accordingly for later projects.
The other thing is that even in "sink only" units, I would like to see TWO sinks: One in a kitchenette area and one in a bathroom vanity type area.
I also found that the sink in both rooms we rented were not really adequate for washing dishes. Moving to a bigger room allowed us to sometimes have a George Foreman Grill for doing a little cooking, but we still bought disposable cups and plates and such because washing dishes just was not a realistic practical option.
Both sinks need to be adequately deep for doing things like washing dishes or hand-washing clothes. I also want an area set up for letting clothes drip dry so it's possible for residents to hand-wash and hang-to-dry their clothes and then they only need to take things like bedding to the laundromat style machines in the building.
I mean if they WANT to let clothes pile up for a week or whatever and go to a laundromat, that's their choice. But the rooms should be designed where hand washing is a viable option, something I have not seen in these old buildings.
I have two adult sons. Management was like "I don't know. The room is really small." and I was like "The three of us have been sleeping in a six-by-six tent. If it's okay with you, it's okay with us."
So we had a lot more space than a six-by-six tent and access to bathrooms 24/7, which is a big deal, running water, electricity and internet 24/7 and I no longer had to be afraid of stormy weather. The room had a sink only and access to shared bathrooms down the hall and I mean at the far end of the hall. We were in the LAST room, direction-wise, with a sink only.
There were forty mailboxes, so I infer there were twenty rental units per floor on two floors. Four units on each floor were a slightly larger room with a private bath, two or three were one-bedroom apartments and the rest were "dorm" style rooms with just a sink that had to use the shared bathrooms.
So likely around thirteen or fourteen rooms per floor had a sink only and there were two public bathrooms per floor. When I first moved in, this was clearly a problem.
You routinely had to wait to access a bathroom but I grew up in a big foodie household and we EAT, which is not the norm for poor people it seems. The longer we lived there, the less we smelled drugs in the building and the more we smelled food cooking and the less drama there was surrounding trying to access a bathroom. The lines largely disappeared.
I have very serious health issues and I frankly did NOT want a private bath of my own when I first moved into the building. I didn't want to have to CLEAN it. I was too sick to deal with stuff like that.
For me at the time, a room with a sink only and shared bathrooms down the hall that someone else cleaned was EXACTLY what I wanted. It was a feature, not a bug, that my first rental unit in that building had no private bathroom.
We eventually moved into one of the larger rooms with a private bath, which had its good points and bad points.
Some thoughts:
Thirteen or fourteen rooms with sink only and with one or MORE people apiece in them is too many rooms for sharing TWO bathrooms per floor.
I did not hesitate to use bathrooms on either floor, which got me looked at funny by other residents who seemed to feel like you could ONLY use the bathrooms on YOUR floor.
I don't see any reason why the rooms need to EITHER have a sink only OR have a full bath. If some rooms had a half bath (sink plus toilet) or three-quarters bath (sink, toilet and shower only, no tub) that would reduce demand on the public bathrooms while still making them relevant and necessary for MOST rooms, most of the time. Also, if you have a full bath and more than one person living in your unit or YOUR unit in specific is having plumbing issues, it's nice to be able to go down the hall to the shared bathrooms.
I am envisioning a situation where there are some rooms with sink only, some with a half bath, some with a three-quarter bath and some with a full bath. If you divide twenty rooms per floor by four different types of rooms, you get five of each type unit.
At least in theory.
Maybe the pilot project would look like that and maybe there would be a way to test demand for the different kinds of rooms and maybe we would find that there is very high demand for three-quarter bathrooms and less for sink only or some such and adjust the number of each type room accordingly for later projects.
The other thing is that even in "sink only" units, I would like to see TWO sinks: One in a kitchenette area and one in a bathroom vanity type area.
I also found that the sink in both rooms we rented were not really adequate for washing dishes. Moving to a bigger room allowed us to sometimes have a George Foreman Grill for doing a little cooking, but we still bought disposable cups and plates and such because washing dishes just was not a realistic practical option.
Both sinks need to be adequately deep for doing things like washing dishes or hand-washing clothes. I also want an area set up for letting clothes drip dry so it's possible for residents to hand-wash and hang-to-dry their clothes and then they only need to take things like bedding to the laundromat style machines in the building.
I mean if they WANT to let clothes pile up for a week or whatever and go to a laundromat, that's their choice. But the rooms should be designed where hand washing is a viable option, something I have not seen in these old buildings.