Tag: Micro Apartments

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Cutting the Housing-Car Umbilical Cord

Whether you’re aware of it or not, most homes–or to be more precise, “dwelling units”–require parking. Meeting these requirements is not a big deal in low density suburbs with their copious amounts of space for driveways and garages. But it’s a big issue in high and medium density areas, where real estate developers might only be able to build as big as available parking spots permit. These requirements can put residents looking for affordable housing in a pinch. Making housing density low in desirable areas dwindles housing stock, driving housing prices higher. Alternately, developers must create off-street parking to satisfy requirements; the expense of those parking spaces trickles down to residents.

“The single biggest impediment to main street development, lower cost housing and midrise development is the parking requirement,” architect and Treehugger.com’s managing editor Lloyd Alter told us. “A parking spot costs a fortune to build and needs a big enough site to get all the ramps in,” he adds.

Portland, Oregon is one city that’s very familiar with this issue. More specifically, Portland’s recent crop of micro-apartments have created a situation where residential population density is outpacing available parking spaces, at least as that proportion relates to conventional dwelling unit to car ratios. Development has continued because of zoning loopholes, but like Seattle, existing residents have been up in arms; they are taking to the streets because those streets might have fewer parking spaces.

Some are proposing to cap the number of parking permits issued to micro-apartment buildings. According to the Portland Tribune who interviewed several Portland developers, this idea would solve the city’s parking woes. Alter agrees, “Limiting the number of parking permits is a perfectly reasonable strategy; The NIMBYs [not in my backyard] get to keep their spots, the NEWBEs know in advance that they don’t want to live here [Portland] and own a car without spending more money on some distant garage.”

On the surface, this solution might not seem like such a big deal. Many buildings have fewer parking spaces than dwellings. But these tend to be in high density places like San Francisco and NYC that have robust public transit systems. This is a bigger deal in a medium density city like Portland where 72% of residents still own cars. Implicit in the idea of a parking cap for micro-apartments is that how we live and how a neighborhood performs can be affected be housing type–by adding density and removing cars, micro-apartments might shift a neighborhood from being mostly low-density and car-centric, to higher-density and bike/walk/car-share/bike-share reliant.

But all of this requires new thinking on the part of regulators.

“I think that the extra density that comes with micro-apartments absolutely has to be accompanied by a revised concept about parking requirements,” Sarah Watson, Deputy Director of Citizen’s Housing and Planning Council (CHPC), a NYC housing advocacy group and think-tank, told us. She also said that “public transportation has to support those residents” or there should be “well-managed options for car sharing as part of the projects.”

Patrick Kennedy has been dealing with this issue for decades. He is the Bay Area developer behind SmartSpace as well as an upcoming, 160-unit micro-apartment building in the Mission district. “I think it is a fair compromise,” he says of giving up parking for high density, convenient living. “I did one development that had 6 parking spaces for 35 units and it didn’t cause any problems,” he told us.

Granted, most of Kennedy’s development were in places like Berkeley, which have a density twice that of Portland. But he sees the trend that Watson alluded to. “We’re moving in this direction [away from requisite parking]. In the age of Uber and bike-sharing, living without a car just isn’t that big of a sacrifice.”

Alter sees this shift away from car dependence and more reliance on alternative transportation strategies. “Fewer and fewer people who live downtown own cars. They don’t need them in their daily routines and Zip cars and car 2go are available when they do.”

He points to a new building in his Toronto hometown as a prime example of this trend. “They just built and sold a 300 unit condo without a single parking spot, in a part of town with no permit parking. They threw in 5 Zip car parking spaces and a bike locker. This is the future of development downtown.”

Watson noted something that goes beyond no permits. “I heard recently that a new micro-apartment building in DC that makes residents sign as part of their lease that they will not have a car…taking the idea even further!”

We’ve said it once and we’ll say it again: cars and the sprawl they support have costs. There are social costs, huge environmental costs, even costs to our economic wellbeing. Historically, these costs have been hidden by entitlement–that having a big home, car and the infrastructure to support these things are inalienable rights. But as we as a culture shift our ideals from space, stuff and privacy to convenience, mobility and connection, we realize we no longer want to foot the bill for these costs. It is our hope that regulators will make it easier to shift to this new way of living, removing parking regulations where and when they don’t make sense.

Misty street with parked cars image via Shutterstock

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Parisian Architects Give Client the Shaft

What do you do with a space that’s tall, skinny and only has light coming from its roof? That’s the question Marc Sirvin and Clémence Eliard of Agence SML set out to answer with Alban Diner’s 28 ft, shaft-like Parisian apartment.

Amazingly, Sirvin and Eliard fit four levels and 25 sq m (269 sq ft) of floorspace into the tiny space. Natural light, which only comes from skylights on the roof, is able to diffuse because of open-grid steel floors as well as skinny and steep welded steel stairs that create in minimal visual impedance.

Each floor is a room: the basement is the bathroom, the the ground level is the kitchen/living room, the second floor is the home office and a small lofted third floor holds the bed. The trip from bed to bathroom down skinny steps would seem to be a perilous one, though in the video above, Diner seems pretty relaxed about it all.

While it’s hard to argue that this apartment is the most practical of layouts, we’re impressed they’ve done anything with this difficult space. Nothing is more edited than using, and making usable, something that would otherwise go to waste.

Via Fair Companies and Arch Daily

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Why Are Millennials Living at Home?

Maybe it’s access to stocked fridges or the premium cable channels–whatever the reason, Millennials (roughly those born between 1983-1996) are shacking up with their folks at unprecedented rates. The above infographic from Good Magazine shows that in the US there were 21.6 million people–7% of overall population and 36% of Millennials—living with their folks in 2012; a 4% increase over just five years prior. The US is not alone. According to StatCan, 59.3% of 20-29 year old Canadians were living with their folks or one folk in 2011. Compare that to 11% in 1981!

Truth is Millennials aren’t staying at home because they’re watching Game of Thrones with tubs of Neapolitan ice cream. The reasons are economics and lifestyle choices. The days of graduating college into a verdant field of employment opportunity are, at least for the time being, over. 2/3 of all American graduates are leaving college with an average of $26K student loan debt. Then there’s low employment rates, which for Millennials stands around 15%–twice the national average. Of the live-at-home American Millennials, 45% reported being unemployed. The other 55% are not necessarily flush; real wages have consistently fallen for Millennials–a problem most acute with their cohort.

Then fewer Millennials are marrying. Only 20% of 18-29 years olds are married; compared to 59% in 1960 for that same group. Tellingly, 44% of Millennials think the institution obsolete according to Pew Research. Moving out to live with your partner just doesn’t have the urgency it might have once had.

What does this have to do with small space living?

We have read many comment boards for stories about micro-apartments, with the frequent comparisons to jail cells and cages. But what often gets missed amidst the fast-flying vitriol are demographic realities and changing lifestyles. Many people–and not just Millennials–don’t want to spend all their money on housing, either by choice or economic necessity; they might not want to marry; and their ideal living situation is more likely to be in the city than suburbs, particularly for Millennials.

There has been a big kerfuffle about micro-housing in the Pacific Northwest, but there has been less talk about why they’re so popular. There’s a huge demand for low-cost, centrally located housing, and having a rumpus room big enough for a ping-pong table is far less important than proximity to work and other amenities. While we can’t prove it, we suspect many of the micro-apartment dwellers are people who might otherwise be living at home. Moreover, as Derek Thompson of The Atlantic stated (perhaps a little optimistically), we are living in an era of cheap food and consumer goods relative to income.  Now it’s the time for housing prices to follow suit.

Of course there are many other factors contributing to the Millennial “failure to launch,” as many have put it. A stagnant economy, questionable returns on higher education, income inequality, a shrinking middle class and so forth. But in a certain way, reducing one of the biggest life expenses–housing and, to some extent, transportation–you can give more mobility for people who may never enjoy the salad days their folks did. And no, many Millennials might not be able afford a 1500 sq ft home for themselves (too often the only choice), which forces them to stay at home. But even with a modest income, they might be able to afford a great 350 sq ft apartment in the middle of the city, one that allows them to live car free and gives them access to the things that they find important.

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Little Red Nest, Baby You’re Much Too Fast

It’s a big week for small red spaces here at LifeEdited. First, was su11’s 620 sq ft Manhattan family pad, and today it’s Paul Coudamy‘s Red Nest. In a feat of architectural magic, Coudamy fit a bedroom, bathroom, dressing and a work spaces into the 23 sq m/247 sq ft Parisian flat.

Beyond its jewelbox aesthetic, what’s interesting to us about the space are its priorities. Given its diminutive proportions, it’s funny to have a dedicated changing area and a full-size tub, both of which typically end up on the editing room floor when designing a small space. Like the su11 space, the bed doubles as the sofa/lounging area.

We suspect these design choices were based on specific client needs. The apartment essentially acts as a place to get dressed, cleaned up and (occasionally) sleep–which, for a Parisian living in the 5th Arrondissement, might be all you need.

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DC Mansion Might Go Micro

Every year, the Economist publishes something called the Liveability [sic] Ranking Report. Its rankings are based on their “Liveability Index” as well as a “Spatially Adjusted Livability Index” which takes into account seven characteristics: Sprawl, green space, natural assets, cultural assets, connectivity (ease of air travel), isolation (proximity to other cities) and pollution. Unfortunately, the States didn’t break the top 10 for 2013. But the US’s top showing wasn’t the city this author expected. It wasn’t Portland, Seattle or San Diego. Coming in at #14 of the 140 global cities ranked was Washington DC; it scored 91.2 on a scale where 100 constituted an ideal city.

While DC might be the country’s most livable city (an assessment not everyone might agree with), its medium density and fairly decentralized layout have not made it a quick taker to the micro-apartment concept, particularly in terms of zoning new buildings. But a new proposal by developer SB-Urban and architectural firm Hartman-Cox seeks to bring a micro-apartment development to the nation’s capital, using an existing–and unlikely–host.

The Patterson Mansion at 15 DuPont Circle is a 13K sq ft Neo-Classical mansion built by Chicago Tribune editor Robert Wilson Patterson in 1903. For the last 63 years, the mansion has been occupied a private women’s club called the Washington Club. In December 2013, a sale and renovation proposal to convert the mansion into a boutique fell through due to landmark considerations. The proposed addition to the mansion was deemed out of keeping with the overall structure’s aesthetic.

The SB-Urban/HC plans to succeed where the previous developer failed. Like the previous bidder, their plan calls for the destruction of the mansion’s non-landmarked 1955 addition. Rather than a hotel, their addition would be a visually-discreet, seven-story structure housing sub-400 sq ft micro apartments. The four-story mansion itself would contain several small apartments along with generous shared living spaces. The building would also feature a landscaped courtyard, big bike room and green roofs. All in all, it looks like a good design, particularly appropriate for DC’s countless government employees who might be living in town for a congressional term or two.

Though the Patterson Mansion project calls for a new structure, it reminds us of the Arcade Providence, which took America’s oldest shopping mall and turned its top two floors into micro-apartments. To us, these buildings are just as exciting as any new development. Creating higher density cities with smart, small interiors through new building is important. But converting existing, lower-density housing into innovative, high-density, city-friendly housing is the greater, and more interesting, challenge.

Many of the buildings that will house us throughout the 21st Century and beyond are already built. Some of those buildings, like the landmarked Patterson Mansion and Arcade Providence, won’t be torn down anytime soon. So the question becomes, “how do we best use what we got to support the creation of sustainable, vibrant cities?” Sometimes that means taking existing structures and using them in ways that are very different from their original purpose. We wish the Patterson Mansion project the best of luck.

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Function and Form Sharing 237 Sq Ft

Often, the biggest limitation in designing small spaces is not lack of floor space, but lack of money. Let’s face it, people with budgets for fancy architects, designs and materials typically live in big spaces. It’s not that small spaces can’t look and perform great. It’s that their less well-heeled dwellers might not be able to give the financial resources that produce functionally and aesthetically remarkable homes. Given this situation, we are always heartened to see small spaces that employ the rigor of design that’s normally limited to big, fancy homes. This 237 sq ft Warsaw flat by Utopia Studio is a perfect example of such a space.

The tiny apartment, from what we can deduce, is shared by a mother, child and their dog. It features a large loft bed with tons of storage underneath. The stairs to the bed house individual drawers. The tiny kitchen has a fold down cutting board that conceals a sink and cooktop. The cozy and sparse living room is adorned with a small sofa and a table that goes from coffee to dining heights. There is wonderful sense of proportion and usability. It does not feel like a showroom apartment.

Beyond the overall intelligence of its execution, this apartment is interesting because its floorplan is so basic. The space is an unremarkable box with one bank of windows. Notably, the ceilings, while perhaps higher than normal, are not unusually high (something other innovative tiny spaces have exploited). In other words, these design ideas could be translated to a multitude of different spaces.

With much of the interior made of plywood and even chipboard, we imagine it was constructed on a reasonable budget. But its clean design and smart layout demonstrate that small spaces can be as elegant and functional as you want them to be.

Via Living in a Shoebox

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Small Rooms Lead to Big Row

Apparently, strong coffee and grey skies aren’t the only commonality between Seattle and Portland. Like its northern neighbor, Portland has jumped on the micro-apartment bandwagon. More specifically, Portland is mirroring Seattle’s boarding-house style micro-apartments (often known as aPodments, which are actually the name of apartments developed by Calhoun Properties, not a general term). These apartments typically feature very small units (150-300 sq ft), a kitchenette, a shared kitchen and a personal bathroom rented at a low, all-inclusive price (often below $1000).

Just like Seattle, some Portlanders are up in arms about the perceived effects of these dainty digs. The issue, once again, is parking. Right now there are two developments causing the stir, both being developed by Snohomish, WA’s Footprint Investments. One is under construction in northwest Portland and another is looking for city approval in the northeastern Hollywood neighborhood. The apartments, enjoy a “group living” designation–the same as dormitories, monasteries and convents. As such, they are not required to provide a set amount of parking spaces. The threat of lost parking in the neighborhoods has spurred protests.

We can’t help but think this is another case of NIMBY-itis. Everyone loves the idea of more walkable and bikeable neighborhoods. They love the idea of housing that supports public transportation (both developments are close to transit hubs). And they love the idea of building space and energy efficient housing. But when these ideas include the possibility–not the reality, mind you–of fewer or further afield parking spaces, people seem all too willing to squash those ideas.

From the outside, it seems like micro-apartments are a decent solution for a city with 3% vacancy rates for rentals and whose rents have increased 6-7% in the last four years. They also seem like a decent solution given the fact that even though there was a big hullaballoo about parking in Seattle, there were few reports of parking being a real issue. Most people live in micro-apartments to save money; the buildings are situated in central locations, making it easy to get around by foot, bike or public transport, thereby avoiding costly car ownership. Most Seattle micro-apartment developers claim that only 10-20% of their residents have cars.

Just so we don’t seem like blind advocates to micro-apartment living, some regulation is probably in order. Most of the residents of these developments will not be monks and nuns. And while Portland’s public transportation is probably great for a city of its size, it’s not on par with larger metropolises like NYC or Seattle; cars, for some, are a practical necessity. In short, there should be some accounting for parking. But this can be a future-based conversation. Why not wait to see if any problems actually crop up? The city of Portland seems to think this a sound tack. Elizabeth Hovde of Oregon Live reported this:

When I asked Joe Zehnder, a chief planner for the Bureau of Planning and Sustainability, about whether the definitions will be updated to better accommodate micro-housing, he said, “We need to see how this type of building performs. So we have nothing underway.”

Not to seem too insensitive to the plight of these Portlanders, but what if the micro-apartments reduce the number of available spaces in these neighborhoods? What if people had to walk a little further to and from their cars? As someone who has owned a car in NYC, I know that making parking difficult makes you far less inclined to drive. It makes walking, biking and using public transport far more attractive. These consequences, which support personal and planetary health, seem like questionable foes to fight.

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What is a Micro Apartment?

Amidst its turmoil, the City of Seattle has drafted a proposal for establishing citywide micro-apartment (aka “micro-unit” and “micro-housing”) regulations. The good news is that “DPD [Dept. of Planning and Development] has found that micro-housing provides an important lower-cost housing option that is appealing to many renters, and we recommend that it continue to be allowed to meet this demand.”

But before you approve of something–particularly as it pertains to governmental policy–you must define what that something is. And define Seattle did. According to the proposal, a micro-apartment cannot:

  • Be larger than 285 sq ft.
  • Have an oven or cooktop.
  • Be without one 120 sq ft kitchen for every eight residents.
  • Have a sink outside the bathroom.
  • Have “no more than 8 micros (or 8 unrelated individuals)…located in a micro dwelling unit.”
  • Have less than one bike parking station per four micro-unit residents.
  • Be built in single family zones.

The proposal also makes a clear distinction between a micro-unit and a “Congregate House,” which has more than eight micros in a dwelling unit. They site larger developments like dormitories and senior homes as examples of the species, Though “Some recent forms of development with similarities to the form of housing referred to as micro- housing are classified as congregate residences,” according to the proposal. The two respective housing types will undergo different levels of design review; the larger the development, the more rigorous the review.

The proposal suggests a very regional interpretation of what a micro-apartment is. Seattle has had friction when micro-apartments encroached into single family home neighborhoods; they’ve dealt with parking issues and lax design oversight. All of these issues are addressed in the document (available here in its entirety).

The document begs the question of whether there is a universal definition for a micro-apartment? For the adAPT NYC competition, micro-apartments meant an apartment that was between 275-300 sq ft, but these included kitchens and ADA bathrooms. In San Francisco, legislation last year granted an allowance for building dwelling units as small as 220 sq ft, with 70 sq ft for bathroom and kitchen. In Boston, they nervously authorized the construction of 450 sq ft “Innovation Units.” In Providence, RI, they’re making apartments as small as 225 in the Arcade Providence. On the other side of the planet in Japan and Hong Kong, many of these numbers would be shockingly large. In other words, for every region, there’s a different definition of “micro.”

Being confused, we turned to the all powerful Wikipedia for answers. And wouldn’t you know it, they have a definition:

A microapartment, also known as an apodment or microflat, is a one-room, self-contained living space, usually purpose built, designed to accommodate a sitting space, sleeping space, bathroom and kitchenette within around 150–350 square feet (c. 14–32 square metres). Residents may also have access to a communal kitchen, patio and roof garden.

While we aren’t so bold as to question the Authority of Wikipedia, we would submit that “aPodment” is the name of a particular developer’s (Calhoun) properties in Seattle. Other than that, the size parameters are fairly in line with what most people call a micro-unit. (Technically, “micro” (µ) denotes something that is 10-6 or 1/1,000,0000. Given that the average new US home is 2505 sq ft, a micro home might be .0025 sq ft).

What this varied definition shows is the inherent relativity of the micro designation–most often relative to the availability of affordable real estate: Less affordable real estate, smaller homes overall, more micro micros. More affordable real estate, larger homes overall, less micro micros. In some cases, the designation can be a way of re-branding small apartments in areas where there is ample housing stock; Providence and Chicago come to mind. This is not necessarily a bad thing, as the new micro-apartments are often nicer and more affordable than their more girthsome neighbors.

We consider the Seattle micro-apartment definition a bit prescriptive. In fact, it more closely resembles a boarding room or efficiency apartment (not bad things per se). Though we understand that much of their policy choices are reacting to an existing situation.

How would we define micro-apartment? Perhaps, “A small, typically urban, self-contained apartment that is between 150-350 square feet.”

image via SmartSpace

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The Three Biggest Objections to Small Living

Smart House, a new condo building featuring micro-apartments in downtown Toronto, is hitting the market this month. The 25-story building has units that range from 288 to 778 sq ft, with an average size of 465. Prices range from mid $200s to mid $500s. According to a press release, the spaces have optional furnishings including:

A bed that folds into the wall and becomes a sofa. Or a desk. Kitchen counter space that expands and retracts. Dining tables built into islands. Niche shelving in what would otherwise be wasted pipe space. Integrated cabinetry and smart appliances. Moveable partitions. Storage conjured all over. 

The developers Urban Capital say Smart House is for “people who hate clutter. Those who crave privacy when they’re not on the town. Toronto-lovers who know what it means to have the hippest stores, cafés and bars outside their door with Bay Street around the corner.”

We think building a centrally-located, craftily-designed, amenity-packed micro-apartment development in a city with a tight housing market deserves the “smart” moniker. They might not be for everyone, but they may be for many.

Not all Torontonians think they’re so smart however. Many have cried out against their expense and size. Comments from a National Post article say things like “I guess Torontonians have a choice between living like animals in a cage and living like human beings elsewhere,” and “What [sic] did they decide to build this out of the boxes that your refrigerator came in?” These were far from isolated sentiments.

Controversy seems to be a built-in feature with micro-apartments. In Seattle, people say that they are bringing transient populations to established neighborhoods. In San Francisco, they say micro-apartments will displace families. In Boston, they say they’re too small. In Vancouver, they say micro-apartments are displacing homeless populations. In Toronto and NYC, it’s the expense. Each city seems to have its own regional objection.

It would be too easy to make a blanket dismissal of the complaints; many have more than a grain of truth. Like any commercial venture, micro apartment development will be beset by profiteering, advertising jargon, questionable code compliance, build quality, aesthetics and so on.

But a number of complaints simply seem driven by logic that’s incongruent with many peoples’ social or economic realities. We thought we’d address the three most common objections we hear:

Objection #1: They’re too expensive for their size.

Most of the objections to micro-apartment costs revolve around relative costs, e.g. “the place down the block sells for $500/sq ft and you’re trying to pawn off this tiny place for $750.” This is fair to an extent, but it misses a big consideration: absolute costs. Let’s take Toronto as an example. Say one of the 288 sq ft apartments costs $250K; that’s $868/sq ft. Now let’s say a comparable boutique condo in the area costs $700/sq ft, but the smallest unit available is 600 sq ft, i.e. $420K total or $170K more expensive than the micro unit. This is likely to be prohibitively expensive for a lot of people, many of whom don’t care about or need the extra space.

Same goes for rent: in Seattle, people rent micro-apartments for their absolute costs, not relative ones. Relatively speaking, these units are higher priced per square foot to other rentals in the area, but no matter the size, there are few (perhaps no) furnished, utilities-included, private, centrally-located apartments you can rent for $800/month. The swelling ranks of Seattle’s micro-apartment renters attest to what’s important to most people: low total cost of housing and location.

It should also be noted that micro apartments have a higher ratio of costly square footage (i.e. bathrooms and kitchens) to cheaper square footage (living rooms, bedrooms). This makes their construction costs higher on a per unit basis than larger apartments.

Objection #2: They’re too small.

People often have sticker shock when it comes to square footage. If someone were to say that two people share 600 sq ft, few would be amazed, but one person in 275 is crazy small. Listen, if you’re a collector or pack rat or have a family of four, micro-apartments might not be right for you. Different strokes for different folks. But many people around the world are living contentedly in tiny spaces. In Japan, it’s not uncommon for singles to live in apartments as small as 100 sq ft.

Design also plays a role. A small space can be a cage or a great launching pad for your life. By lifting some of the restrictions on building small, we imagine we’re going to get less of the former and more of the latter.

The main point is square footage is not an objective issue, it’s a cultural one. Whether someone chooses to live that way is up to him or her.

Objection #3: Micro-apartments are for transients

household-sizes

Listen, many couples and even families can live in small spaces. But here’s the deal: micro-apartments (sub 300 sq ft) aren’t for transients, they’re usually for single people who want to live alone. More and more people are choosing to live that way. According to NYU professor Eric Klinenburg, 40% of households in cities like Atlanta, Denver, Seattle, San Francisco and Minneapolis contain a single occupant. In Manhattan and Washington, that percentage is closer to 65%. In the US and Canada, 27% of the population lives alone (numbers that are only increasing), yet in the US only around 12% of homes are one-bedroom or smaller. Micro apartments, in many ways, are a dwelling style more in line with today’s demographics.

Ultimately, whether someone lives in a small place is his or her decision. As the species evolves and becomes more of a cultural mainstay, we imagine public opinion will evolve too. What do you think on this topic? Please share your thoughts in our comments section.

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Seattle’s Micro Apartment War

Add micro apartments to wind turbines and public bike stations to things people don’t want in their backyards. Seattle’s micro-apartment controversy continues as news headlines and this letter we received from Seattle resident Connie Ann Innis suggests. Here’s what she wrote:

Dear LifeEdited,

I own a condo next door to one of the aPodments in Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood.

Last evening I spoke with a young woman who lives in one of these micro-apartments (I stopped to thank her for picking up curbside litter left by pedestrians and tossed out of car windows). This woman was shaking as she told of complete strangers stopping to scream at her in a threatening manner as she smoked in a designated outdoor area, cruel comments directed at the micro-apartment tenants as a whole and scathing prejudice voiced at neighborhood meetings (meetings that she actually bothered to attend).

This woman is working and studying at a nearby community college; the micro-apartments proximity to mass transit and excellent “walk score” preclude the need for expensive car ownership and the relatively low rent allows her to work toward her dreams.

Everyone is entitled to their opinion, of course and it’s true there are plenty of ugly, cheap apartments being built in Seattle without regard for impact. The developers who stand to gain wealth from these buildings are appropriate targets for dissent and complaints re: zoning laws and structure; the inhabitants of these structures are NOT.

Yes most of us love to look at gracious, old brick buildings with stunning landscaping, but this is an urban neighborhood and those mansions often come with $4 million price tags and the need for “staff” [see above video for an example of what Innis is referring to].

A neighborhood that prides itself on creativity, acceptance and diversity has in many cases become hostile and disrespectful to “poor people”.

Innis touches on most of the objections to micro-apartments: illegal zoning, inadequate community approval, rapacious developers. But her tale also alludes to a less technocratic objection: that many residents don’t want what they perceive to be mostly young, single, less-permanent, lower-income micro-apartment dwellers to change the character of their mostly middle-age, family-oriented, more permanent, middle-to-upper-middle class neighborhoods. This objection withstands the obvious demand for affordable housing in centrally located neighborhoods; the questionable veracity of the arguments about the demographic makeup of the micro-apartment dwellers; or their actual impact on the character of the neighborhoods.

Fortunate for the micro-apartment advocates, Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn is decidedly less conflicted on the issue, focusing on the apartments’ affordability, central locations that curb the need for cars and that their appeal to all ages. Here’s what he told KIROTV:

What we’ve seen is the rise of these micro apartments because it’s affordable living for people who don’t want to own a car and want to use transit and ride a bike. And they’ve been very popular. And it’s an affordable way for a young person or an older person to live in the neighborhood where they work.

While this pro-con polarity is getting most of the media attention, there are less public, more nuanced opinions in many Seattle neighborhoods that find themselves host to micro-apartment complexes.

One Seattle Life-Editer says that he was encouraged to sign a petition opposing a micro-apartment building by an online neighborhood forum, but this same forum routinely has postings seeking reasonably-priced apartments for friends and family just moving to the city.

He believes that Seattle is a very civil place, so the density debate is sometimes framed by the practical realities of finding places where schoolteachers, Starbucks workers and young families can live. But when this practical question is tempered with economic interests–for the resident looking for an affordable place to live, for the developer looking to capitalize on this demand and for the citizen trying to preserve the integrity and value of his or her neighborhood–there’s a lot of room for disagreement and debate.

There are no easy answers, so feel free to continue the debate in the comments below. We’d love to hear you thoughts.

Sunset View of Seattle Skyline image via Shutterstock