Home alone in Gotham: when all you can afford is tiny dwellings

I lived in a shared apartment a block from here 20 years ago thank you we made it work with four of us in a rundown flat with four tiny bedrooms one bathroom and a shared kitchen housing has only gotten more expensive since then and Nico and I have continued to investigate how young people with limited budgets manage to live here okay 13 years ago we filmed Felice Cohen in her 90 square foot pad the first night I slept in the apartment I had a panic attack when I actually went up to bed and I woke up in the middle of the night and there was the ceiling when I woke up there was the ceiling here and the wall on every side and and then after that night I have not had another panic attack and I love it up here and at night it's cozy today 25 million people have viewed her lofted bed okay this is what it's like to work from The Loft Elena Randazzo was one of them and last year she moved into what she thought was Felice's old home this is water that leaked in yeah ceiling is very close it actually might be one foot like half a foot anytime I want the air conditioning to be hotter or colder I have to literally physically get up and over this thing it wasn't a perfect fit but at 650 a month she could save and after less than a year in her closet-sized home she moved into something bigger micro apartments aren't usually something permanent the bathroom is pretty big but you just got to be careful you don't hit your knee when you're sitting on the toilet a year after we filmed with Felice she also moved out after her landlord recognized the apartment in our video and evicted her for not being on the lease she said she was ready for something bigger so how do you sit on the toilet now I'm like normal now I don't have to sit sideways really it's estimated there are about 3 000 apartments in New York City under the current 400 square foot minimum these are left over from a time when renting a room was the norm for those with a lower income in the early 20th century New York City had blocks and blocks of residence hotels and boarding houses from 1820 to 1860 the City's population grew by 600 percent thinks mostly to newly arrived immigrants single-family homes were divided into multiple Living Spaces to fit more people renters paid a couple dollars a month for a room or about a third of their income renting just a room made sense to those who couldn't afford bigger by the mid 20th Century 10 of the housing market was single room occupancy defined but these are still an option for students or those just looking for cheaper rent the building used to be a hostel it's now just small apartments mostly students but of course like I live here as well so and what floor are you on I'm on the fourth floor so definitely keeps you in shape did you have a choice is there much available when you looked when I was looking there wasn't but just in the last month or so there's probably been a half about a half dozen available they're just constantly changing out yep so there's a lot of changeover a lot yeah especially certain times of the year because it's a lot of students I was just looking for something that was going to be in my price range what was your price range as cheap as possible but it was about 1200 in this place when I moved in was a thousand so how long have you been here I've been here for two and a half years now so you're like the veteran of the building but generally used to live above me was here for 15. oh wow so this is all the bathrooms because there's no bathrooms actually in the apartments so this toilet in here there's a shower here the whole thing's a shower right right nice overhead rain shower it's luxury and then of course just another bathroom another shower then yet another bathroom so so you don't really have to wait no and if it's ever an issue these I can always go to another floor if I had to and here we are at the apartment how big is this 86 square feet I was thinking of somewhere in the 90s but we remeasured it so it's 86. where's the kitchen so here's the kitchen it's just this section of it okay it has everything you normally want you have you know your stove in here and a toaster oven yep so I can what can you make in there oh my God that is so cute little tiny Pyrex I'll make baked ziti Little Cakes it's a little cast iron I got it's a gift but what do you do with I mean one hamburger I try to see exactly how much I can do in here and what I can get away with foreign I do everything you'd normally do in an apartment but just Trump down a lot I said a friend over yesterday for dinner I made us some pasta we had our pasta dinner in here and yeah it just takes a while to cook the sauce and then the pasta then them together to heat it up better than nothing because okay it smells really good it actually smells good how many people have you had hair the most is six cheers [Laughter] and your dining table slash work table this is cool I found out on the street it's just an old school desk I'm here probably probably four hours a day I sit here five hours editing I can't sit in bed and edit Rose I'll get distracted and end up just watching TV or something so I set up my stuff here and I can eat here look outside or if I have multiple people over you can scooch it put another chair over here on the side all the Furnitures on sliders so I can move it out of the way if I need to get here or repair my bicycle I can do that now and laughs so you do this and then you stand up here and I use that for storage and then now we have actually an extra dining table that I used to have set up in here yeah I found that outside a restaurant going out of business I cut hairs so here's my hair cutting kit I was originally a student in New York which is why I was here in the first place I have just my computer in here but if I really want to get into editing or if I want two screens I have the TV on a swivel I used to be I really wanted to be into like making movies and documentaries a lot I can move this over and then have a keyboard and mouse and have a bigger screen and be able to do more like formal editing and that's quite a few yeah just it's been fun to you know do a lot now I've been able to do this only for like a way of work since nine months ago this way you can sort of sneak your legs in a little bit and I can sit here and read or I'll use the table to eat my breakfast at just you can get outside open up the window get a lot of fresh air which is great that's comfortable yeah comfortable enough for a little bit I'm at view yeah it's the back of the building which is nice because it's quiet when the windows open and you don't get a lot of Street noise in cars it's just sounds in New York and there's there's a tree like so you have some vegetation that changes probably color right right it changes color a lot lose its leaves they'll get the leaves back it always shows the weather it adds a sense of nature out there too it's not just looking out to buildings yeah I know it's just a tenement but also a tree exactly yeah access to Fresh Air wasn't always guaranteed in New York apartments in 1900 one third of all housing in New York was tenements keep up with a booming population these were built very densely often leaving little room for natural light and air movement by the end of the century reformers began to Advocate cleaning up what were too often inhumane conditions the tenement house Act of 1901 required indoor plumbing and exterior window and at least one room of 120 square feet over a decade ago we were invited to a Soho tenement building for a dinner party [Music] dress our friend Graham Hill had just finished converting a rundown apartment into a modern micro flat this main space transforms into five or so different spaces and say the master bed this is the office over here this is when you have guests over this whoa this pulls up thought you guys will come around the corner it fit two bedrooms two workspaces and a dining room for 12 and he was eager to show it off [Laughter] there's another one another one over there and so you can sleep one or two in here then uh one or two in here so conceivably four comfortably in a 400 square foot apartment Grands Transformer wall made headlines foreign but transforming Furniture has been around for a while [Music] welcome 12 years ago Luke Clark Tyler invited us to tour his rented room in a former 1910 boarding house where he had created his own custom wall bed so this is my place it's 78 square feet for the but I gotta move the couch cushions if you have a bed in the space it kind of closes everything off so I built the bed so that it could just kind of tuck away kind of like a Murphy bed but the other direction and then it just hinges down so this is the bed it's super easy and then the hardest part is making the bed but everyone knows that if you have a bed up against the corner and then when you're done you just put it back up and you've got your living room again and then it becomes a couch so this way it's a lot easier for me to kind of hang out so for tea I'm gonna have to fill up my cup in the bathroom this is the bathroom that Me Myself And Then There are three other apartments that are similar size to the four of us use this I grew up in our family we only had one bathroom for the family so I'm used to you just hold it five minutes if you have to you know whatever I guess everyone chooses how they want to spend their money and of course I could get a bigger place I guess but I like the compact nature of it so you can just prop your feet up on the wall this was Luke's second single room rental in York and he'd had to build his own furniture for both and you go like so the same year we met Luke we met another New Yorker trying to bring off the shelf transforming Furniture to the masses and you see a bed and the bed actually stays in place and now you can bring the bed down much of what he was selling had been designed by the Italian company clay but Ron Barth thought these pieces could work for every New Yorker you have a seven foot desk on this side you have three and a half feet of hanging and then with a little bit of pressure on the desk down comes your bed you have 14 feet of shelves behind the bed you have your bed you have your folding headboard as is typical so you know now when you look at that second bedroom or that third bedroom you know which used to be a closet that got a window installed in it by a developer now it suddenly it becomes a functional bedroom there's the bed this year when we return to Manhattan it did seem transforming Furniture was everywhere and micro Apartments now come pre-loaded hi wow so how big is this um roughly 80 square feet do you know what it was was it a closet I mean no actually it wasn't these are all just micro units in this building that I live in but I believe everyone else's is just like this yeah so it was built just to be tiny Apartments yep yep do you want me to show you the bed the thing just pulls out right here it's just like oops with a noise with a little fun little Airy noise I'm actually really it's like a spaceship kinda so everything came with it they provided the mattress a new mattress obviously you kind of have to have built-in Furniture here I mean there's no Loft there's no Loft that actually really love this Murphy bed I love how it's designed and then every morning I literally just lift it right back up just like this you don't seem to be making a lot of effort yep all you have to do is just send it the fun little noise and then yes that's it so the Hydraulics are what make it so easy yes how comfortable is okay there you go yes it's very comfortable I love it yes it is so actually did put a Topper there and it's funny because it slides a little bit because of the gravity but I'm used to Camping I'm used to hiking I'm used to so one day I would love to live in a van so I actually explain to people I tell people I basically live in an RV without wheels but this is very comfy to me I love it so because it doesn't look like a flimsy little Murphy bed kind of our couch sofa bed right exactly yeah they always provide the new tent with a new mattress I love it it's not sofa bed living like those thin little sofa beds that pull out and you're like nothing like that nope it's an actual bed and then you close it up just like that this converts into like a desk which I don't I only use is like if I'm folding laundry or something I'll go to a coffee shop or something if I need to do any kind of work and then I just slide everything back in and all these quicker baskets let's here's all my bedding right here and then I use these as just like bags and the thing you do have actually a lot of bags I do as a personal trainer you know I'm always commuting around the city so it's so so these are my I'm a big Runner I just ran two marathons backed back with my best friend but these are my dirty running shoes and I can show you where I keep all my other shoes and clothes in my foyer where are you we're in the foyer and then in the bedroom that's it yeah and that's one of the best things actually is that it takes me two seconds to get from one place to the other so so I do keep most of my shoes in here so shoes and bags and bags in its proper place and then I like empty spots so and I can also say this because I was once a hoarder almost a hoarder that sounds terrible before like in college I kept every little thing because I'm a very sentimental person as well and it was it was crazy and I moved to Hawaii racked up a lot of debt while I was in Hawaii and there was then that I realized I need to get out of debt so what am I going to do I'm gonna just sell a bunch of my stuff that I don't need that's not being put to use and paid off the debt with the stuff that I wasn't using and I realized I don't need to own a lot I put these in myself actually as you can see that Rod up there you can hang things but I decided not to use that so I put these in so I just fold a huge win here's that I'm for 11. so I don't know if someone who is 511 could live here maybe actually I shouldn't say that you guys could live here totally it's just all about how you utilize your space and stuff anyway so now we're in the living room bedroom living room kitchen I do love like the little separation here and as you can see like again huge believer not keeping anything out right so my air fryer my one pot my one pan I just need everything just is immediately put away after I use it but I don't need to have it out or whatnot you know all right in the bathroom here we go yeah okay so this is it you know and then you just drive up here is the shower just what you need that's it as you can see there's no sink in here so I do brush my teeth in the kitchen and this is my living area and my couch yes this is the only chair I have so it's all honestly a lot of time literally just like sprawled out like I grew up with a lot of space in Texas and a lot of people are like do you ever want something bigger and as far as right now goes no not at all because of the community that I have out here very thankful that at the snap of a finger I could just be like out my door and I met my friends in five minutes ready one two three so I definitely don't miss space poem is my lifestyle it's running alongside my friends they are my home in 1965 there were about 100 000 single room occupancy units in the city but over the following decades developers began to convert them to larger units in 1987 New York restricted new apartments to a 400 square foot minimum smaller Flats were grandfathered in micro Apartments grew again in the 2010s the city decided to experiment and allow the building of new micro units Carmel Place opened in 2016 with 55 Apartments some as small as 260 square feet but the code still requires one room of 150 square feet and this doesn't include closet kitchen or bathroom space when we shrink an apartment we are not allowed to shrink the kitchen and bathroom beyond what is required for accessibility so what we are shrinking is the sleeping and living space only seven percent of the city's housing stock are studio apartments this is called a Juliet Balcony which is a fancy term for not really a balcony and yet more than half of all Manhattan residents live alone most of the people we saw at Carmel Place were young but 16 of Manhattan nights are over 65. hi Kirsten nice to meet you Michael hi Michael and his wife recently moved back to the city after raising their son in the suburbs so what do you want me to do I want to take take it down so right underneath the center follow the seam yeah there's a handle under there yeah just like this oh okay let's give it a good poem here to support you okay just get ready to catch it all right because as sooner or late I'm gonna have to do this myself he was still learning to work some of the furniture all right I think it's getting a good grip on that lever okay okay had you seen a Murphy bed before I mean even growing up in New York like is it oh yeah it's my first year of medical school it was in like a studio apartment and it came with a Murphy bed it was like maybe half the size of this thing and it came with a pull-out Murray bed so I had to do it every day and I liked it it was one of the most comfortable beds I ever slept in but do you want to just demonstrate this and pull this out sure definitely very easy it goes out as far as this you could sit what eight or six twelve twelve you're right plenty of room for a Passover Seder and probably go can probably go out a little bit further but you know it's going to hit this here we go you want to handle this yeah I'll handle this I think I will we lived here on the upper west side from 1974 up to 1986. grab the others yeah we were here before the Renaissance of the Upper West Side and gentrification was just beginning yeah I have a bad back but no that's okay and then we had my son and then we decided we wanted to raise them outside of the city no nope we came back because it would be better to live in the city than up in Westchester where you need a car you don't have to drive we like to walk that's what we were looking for maximizing our space I mean uh we only have a few closets you know we have our own stuff our clothes and other things so uh if it wasn't for this type of what you call a modular design uh I don't know where we would be able to put this stuff there you go yeah because you came from a bigger house a much bigger house if you eyeball it you could probably put one here three here and one here and I could go more I mean uh that's your suburban home you had a large table probably I had a large table and had a dining room yeah so you had a downsize put it Miley yeah okay well I had to I had I had four bedroom houses and I had two two fireplaces and you know this big house on an acre and a half land so you had a living room a dining room a guest bedroom I had four bedrooms and I had a study I mean you know right right see this is I'm glad you guys came because this is a good uh learning moment for me I could see us calling up Lauren I have six people here I don't know how to open this friggin thing so you wanted an office as well yeah I mean there's a lot of walls yeah I mean one of my uh goals wherever I lived was um having a study or an office for my own uh books and things like that plenty of space I have plenty of books I have we have lots of Records these are all Laura's these are all like Barbara Streisand and that era you know the Beatles I mean I just I like how it does feel like different places like this whole area feels like an office because of this this whole entire wall and then that feels yeah I mean most days it is an office it is yeah we spend a lot of time here reading or yeah yeah yeah I I write you know I write the short stories and I'm writing a a book not that I'm I'm not a writer I I just write you know fiction non-fiction fiction wow so this is a new career as well it's not a career okay now create a hobby whatever you want to call it it's a hobby okay like people play golf They dabble in stamps this is a nice little coffee table that actually can raise up pull up some chairs and and then you can lower it to whatever height you want down to its lowest height there yeah very smooth I use this every day you move it every day well I usually uh the chair is set up here and then I move it over here it's like it's in line with the TV okay and and the TV and then the TV is on a swivel and I put it like this I usually my meals here we eat our meals here and that's your dining table that is my dining table did you think you would always think you would retire in New York City did you always think that you would come back yeah that was why why did you always have that in your head well it was like in the scheme of things you know uh we like I mean we we like living this city before we moved yeah before you have kids you have your careers and you get through to that and then you go into the family thing and then when they're out when that's taken care of then you go on to something else and it all boils down so we need a place to live really that's it okay I'm falling oh

Channel: Kirsten Dirksen

Views: 559,700

Keywords: tiny apartments, felice cohen, microapartments, emancipation, luke clark tyler, manhattan living, tiny living, carmel place, resource furniture, alaina randazzo, lofted bed, empty-nesters, city living, quality of life, solo living, micro-apartments, smallest living, studio flat, bedsit, simple living, urban simple living, downsizing, downshifting, single room occupancy, dorms for adults, micro-unit, co-living spaces, solo spaces, nikki espina, alexander verhaeg, ron barth

Id: vCUUGfUvOVc

Length: 28min 15sec (1695 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 17 2023