Man, I’ve been thinking a lot about this topic. I’m in Brooklyn and it’s out of fucking control. I’m a comm/PR guy — i.e. a writer who needs to cover his not insubstantial bills. Luckily, I write about housing and innovative ways of doing it — housing that is. I just wrote a little rant about the need to bring back the SRO that’s germane to this topic.

While some artists and other vagabonds got their own East Village flat, many urban newbies lived in SROs (aka Residential Hotels) — they provided bare bones, affordable housing in decent locations. But there was an SRO genocide during the 20th Century for reasons I go into in my post.

I think SROs need to come back on a large scale for innumerable reasons. It’s even possible that the model might work inside current political and economic realities of our most expensive cities.