Bourgeoisifying The Boarding House

The boarding house seems to have been around since the beginning of recorded history, a mode of habitation which worked quite well, disappearing only recently and only in the face of a sustained socialist attack. The trouble began with Karl Marx. Marx's model for the ideal society was the bourgeois family and its bourgeois home. Socialist regulators, following Marx's lead, supposed they could bring about Marx's notion for the better society simply by imposing Marx's idealized bourgeois norms on the less affluent class: Forbid 'too many' unrelated people from living in the same house. Mandate a certain minimum size for every apartment. In most US cities the SMALLEST studio apartment must be AT LEAST 400 sq ft while building codes tightly cap the number of unrelated individuals living in one house. Yet intervening in this way against the free market, forcing landlords to abide by bourgeois norms, did NOT so much improve poorer people's living conditions as put them out on the street. Then - having created a huge homeless crisis - socialist human services organizations felt compelled to set up 'emergency shelters' - shelters which of course must operate in flagrant violation of the socialist's own diktats: In emergency shelters one can find even hundreds of unrelated individuals packed together on cots where one is lucky to have 40 sq ft of space let alone 400. And where in the boarding house the resident could at least use his space - however modest - as he liked, under the emergency shelter's strict bourgeois regimentation he has no such control. He must arrive at the shelter by 6:00 pm. He cannot bring his own food. The doors are locked at 8:00 pm. He must be out of bed by 6:00 am, and be on his way by 8:00 am. The other side of the coin of this coerced bourgeois regimen is that victory is declared when the emergency shelter client is simply removed from the shelter and installed in his own tiny apartment. Whatever social connections he established at the shelter are disregarded just as he is compelled to conform with the bourgeois norm of the 'atomized' individual - a practice which some might even argue operates as part of the Marxian strategy to blunt 'proletariat' political power.

At any rate VRT would like to see the boarding house make a comeback as an effective way of creating affordable housing. In the age of the automobile VRT believes the old urban boarding house should relocated to the suburbs and centered around the calming courtyard garden. Frank Lloyd Wright proposed something similar in his Lexington Apartments scheme. VRT believes each tenant ought to have his own full bath, kitchenette, and all-in-one micro washer / dryer while living rooms and dining rooms remain communal in keeping with the boarding house of the past. However VRT proposes to seriously upgrade and enlarge these communal spaces, to bring them more inline with what might find at a resort rather than a boarding house - and to include pleasant large outdoor terraces as well. In short, give the individual his own small but private quarters for dealing with life's necessities. Provide life's simple luxuries of pleasant public places fostering conviviality.

VRT has envisioned constructing these micro apartments with SIPS, structural insulated panels, but stick framing or ICF concrete would work just as well. The design shown has a bank of 72 units on either side of the public living space. This public area has a large sunken TV lounge, banks of dining tables above, a minimal kitchen, and a lower Moroccan themed 'chill' lounge where residents can gather in small groups to discuss the goings on in the world - or even fully recline with their laptop computer.

Each micro-apartment duplex has 4 different levels: A main floor level, the lower bunk level, the upper bunk level, and the upper bunk stair landing level. I mention this only because multiple levels allow for standing upright at the top of the upper bunk stairs. There is a full 8 ft above this landing allowing one to gracefully sit down on the upper bunk. As drawn each micro-apartment is around 170 sq ft with its own HVAC, refrigerator, microwave, kitchen sink, bathroom sink, toilet, and stall shower. Pex is used because the water lines are short - perfect for home-runs and a manifold. A central chase is convenient for running utilities and housing the DWV stack. The sleeping alcoves are 8 ft in length so that the person on the away side can come and go without disturbing anyone.

The public space sandwiched in between the two wings have a split level design where a 'sunken' living room allows for a 12 foot ceiling convenient for the large format projector screen. Just above and to the front are communal tables with kitchen for social occasions. Sitting above this communal indoor area is an outdoor communal patio which extends out toward the street on one end and out into the courtyard garden on the other and is partially covered by a roof. In the the center is a large public courtyard with benches and bistro tables looking out on the lawn.

Each mircro-apartment can house up to 2 adults. As there are 72 units per wing, each block can house up to 300 people. With four blocks in the complex the theoretical total is 1,200 residents.

As the complex spans some 5 acres this works out to a density of 130,000 people per sq mile - comparing favorably with Manhattan's 70,000 people per sq mile. Including parking the complex acreage is bumped up to 15 knocking the density down to 45,000 per sq mile. By VRT's estimates, you need something on the order of 800+ parking spaces - an admittedly helatious number - so maybe the strategy will be to colonize areas with lower acreage costs hopefully giving the area a desirability boost - maybe bumping a class C area up to B. In any case as the great Randal O'toole tirelessly explains, having a car is the BEST investment there is for helping the poor improve their lives as nothing else gives them so much access to so many jobs - and so it is absolutely essential that any affordable housing scheme outside of New York City provide an adequate number of parking places.

VRT's strategy is to bring back the boarding house but in bourgeoisified form. In the age of the car and grocery store and with abundant fast food and frozen food - the boarding house need no longer serve meals. It need merely provide communal places for having them. With indoor and outdoor dining and lounging areas the hope is residents will fashion a pleasant and meaningful society for themselves and while it may not necessarily prove to be the bourgeoisie one sought by the social engineers perhaps it may yet have many charming characteristics and ennobling qualities all its own.

Finally note that in the drawing set the interior finish drawings are mixed in with the SIP construction drawings and are of a slightly different, slightly larger design. Nevertheless they express the basic look and feel of the upper and lower bunk units of each duplex. VRT is happy to collaborate with developers to tailor a boarding house revival design to the particulars of local markets.