How single room occupancies could be the answer to NYCs housing crisis

It was another local tragedy attracting passing notice before being overtaken for our attention by the latest stray bullet homicides and subway assaults.But those concerned with “affordable housing” have much to learn from the Easter morning deaths of three Queens residents and the displacement of perhaps a dozen others in a fire in an illegal Jamaica Estates rooming house. The fact that so many were willing to pay $700 to $1,000 a month to cram into small, subdivided bedrooms with shared bath and kitchen tells us not that we need to ban such “single room occupancy” housing but that they should be a safe, legal and not rare part of our housing market.

Mayor Adams has tried to do just that in his City of Yes housing plan, but key legal obstacles remain.There was a time when SROs were an extensive and crucial part of the city’s residential infrastructure, providing housing that was cheap because it was small.At their height, there were hundreds of thousands such rooms, offering shelter for those who might otherwise be on the street.

But the same crowd that saw any modest housing as slums, and deinstitutionalized the mentally ill, declared war on SROs, phasing them out by law starting in 1954, to the point that the Furman Center at NYU has estimated only 30,000 such rooms remain, even as the homeless dot our street corners. To his credit, Eric Adams, in his housing proposal, has described the virtues of SROs well: “Allowing more small and shared apartments will create a wider variety of housing options, and open larger, family-sized apartments that would otherwise be occupied by roommates.” The proposal is attentive to the fact that this need not be “flophouse” housing for the desperate; it cites the legendary Barbizon Hotel that provided a safe place for single women.Typical SROs include a front desk requiring ID and check-in.SROs would be an especially good use for under-utilized office buildings, thanks to long hallways that could offer s...