While brokers have been urging budget-constrained renters to get roommates for decades, only recently have they started to take a more proactive role in the process, actively offering matching services or posting Craigslist ads for rooms in larger apartments. The practice is just one of many ways that New York Citys rental market is moving toward a rent-by-the-room model a response to the imbalance between New Yorks large single population and the prohibitively high cost of living alone, and, perhaps not coincidentally, a model that thrived in the last century.
Although only buildings zoned for single room occupancy, or S.R.O.s, can rent by the room, the market has increasingly found ways to legally and not so legally accommodate those seeking rooms rather than apartments. Alternatives range from relatively low-cost apartment shares, wherein brokers represent apartments with multiple bedrooms and help renters find roommates to bring the cost per person down to as low as $650 a month, to luxurious, all-inclusive shared suites in co-living developments, where rooms are priced at as much as $2,900 a month.
Sarah Watson, deputy director at the nonprofit Citizens Housing and Planning Council, noted that while S.R.O.s remain highly stigmatized, “theres absolutely nothing wrong with the layout of an S.R.O.,” where residents have their own rooms but share bathrooms.
Read more in The New York Times.