819:. After the US Civil War, boarding houses became less common, declining from 40% of rental listings in 1875 (in San Francisco) to 10% in 1900, and less than 1% by 1910. One reason for this change was that in the decades after the 1880s, urban reformers began working on modernizing cities; their efforts to create "uniformity within areas, less mixture of social classes, maximum privacy for each family, much lower density for many activities, buildings set back from the street, and a permanently built order" all meant that housing for single people had to be cut back or eliminated. By the early 1930s, urban reformers were typically using codes and zoning to enforce "uniform and protected single-use residential district of private houses", the reformers' preferred housing type. In 1936, the FHA Property Standards defined a dwelling as "any structure used principally for residential purposes", noting that "commercial rooming houses and tourist homes, sanitariums, tourist cabins, clubs, or fraternities would not be considered dwellings" as they did not have the "private kitchen and a private bath" that reformers viewed as essential in a "proper home".
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seasonal work or due to layoffs, which meant that the tenants in a rooming house would change throughout a year. As such, rooming house residents tended to have only one or two bags or a single trunk of possessions. Another change between the 19th century and the turn of the 20th century was the separation of rooming houses according to religion (Catholic, Protestant), ethnic origin (Irish) or occupation (mechanics, cooks); while this was common in the 19th century, it became less common in the early 20th century. In rooming houses in the 20th century, homosexual couples of men or women could live together if they appeared to be friends sharing a room and unmarried heterosexual couples could share a room without disapproval. With the removal of the meal service of boarding houses, rooming houses needed to be near diners and other inexpensive food businesses. Rooming houses attracted criticism: in "1916, Walter
Krumwilde, a Protestant minister, saw the rooming house or boardinghouse system "spreading its web like a spider, stretching out its arms like an octopus to catch the unwary soul."
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enabled the owner to convert the shared dining room and parlour into additional rental rooms and stop paying for the preparation of meals. There were often sixteen to eighteen rooms, with either central heating or tiny in-room heating stoves. A single bathroom was usually provided, with hot water only available on certain days and limits to the number of baths allowed per week. Blacks were not allowed in most rooming houses, due to segregation, except in black rooming houses. Old run-down hotels were converted into rooming houses. Some entrepreneurs even converted empty warehouses into inexpensive rooming houses. Prior to 1900, elevators were rare, so rooming house residents had to climb stairs. The hasty conversion of old houses and warehouses into blocks of rooms typically meant that the walls were thin, so residents could hear each other.
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851:"wealthy homeowners" who had guest houses would rent out empty rooms to be able to keep their homes. After WWII, the city ensured that rooming house spaces were available for returning soldiers. In 1949, a sociologist called a Los Angeles rooming house neighbourhood a "universe of anonymous transients." Since traditional class roles were based around home and family, residents in rooming houses did not fit into working class, middle class or upper class patterns; instead, they were in a sort of "social and cultural limbo", with many hoping to rise.
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zoning rules that indirectly reduced rooming houses: banning mixed residential and commercial use in neighbourhoods, an approach which meant that any remaining rooming house residents would find it hard to eat at a local cafe or walk to a nearby corner grocery to buy food. Non-residential uses such as religious institutions (churches) and professional offices (doctors, lawyers) were still permitted under these new zoning rules, but working-class people (plumbers, mechanics) were not allowed to operate their businesses.
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The FHA rules called the existence of stores, offices or rental housing as "adverse influences" and "undesirable community conditions", which reduced the investment and repair support provided in any neighbourhood that deviated from the preferred single-family-home use. Land use reformers also passed
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Despite efforts by the city of
Toronto to regulate rooming houses, there is an invisible, unregistered rooming house sector, which are advertised online or on bulletin boards, often in suburban basements which are subdivided into rooms. Increasing regulation of rooming houses can lead to a decline in
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However, with the boom in housing in the 1950s, middle class newcomers could increasingly afford their own homes or apartments, which meant that rooming and boarding houses became used mainly by post-secondary "students, the working poor, or the unemployed". By the 1960s, rooming and boarding houses
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By 1910, commercial rooming houses began to resemble an "inexpensive hotel", with multi-story buildings, often 25 to 40 years old, with the owners using the house as an income property. The operators, typically former boarding house managers, were getting out of the business of providing meals. This
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In New
Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Manitoba, the provincial government have funding programs that provides financial assistance to owners and landlords of rooming houses that serve low-income people; the funding must be used to do repairs of a structural, electrical, plumbing, or fire safety nature.
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By 2014, rooming houses were disappearing from
Winnipeg due to a complicated regulatory framework involving multiple government departments and "market pressure" in the housing market. A 2014 report about Toronto rooming houses noted the increase in suburban rooming houses, often in basements; this
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A study of 295 residents from 171 rooming houses in
Toronto found that "residents aged 35 years and older had significantly poorer health status than their counterparts in the Canadian general population" and the residents had a "high prevalence of ill health", with the worst-off residents (from a
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Before the 1920s, the wages for women working as seamstresses or servers was often too low for them to afford their own room, so often women shared a room with another woman. Due to the sectors where rooming house residents lived, they often had to move, either due to seeking new jobs, because of
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In the 1930s and 1940s, "rooming or boarding houses had been taken for granted as respectable places for students, single workers, immigrants, and newlyweds to live when they left home or came to the city". In
Toronto, rooming houses were common in the 1930s, during the Great Depression, because
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units in hotels) are the least expensive housing for single adults. Rooming houses are usually owned and operated by private landlords. Rooming houses are better described as a "living arrangement" rather than a specially "built form" of housing; rooming houses involve people who are not related
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were deteriorating, as official city policies tended to ignore them. By the 1970s, investors started buying up city houses, turning them into temporary rooming houses to make rental income until the desired price in the housing market for selling off the properties was reached, a process called
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Not all rooming houses are legal, inspected units, as some landlords also rent out unlicensed rooms. In
Winnipeg, four branches of city government regulate rooming houses: a licensing branch, a business branch, a "livability" living standards bylaw and the fire prevention branch. The livability
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A study of rooming houses in Ottawa, Ontario in 2016 found that "many units are in very poor condition", with issues such as mould, cockroaches, bedbugs, and broken locks. An article about
Montreal rooming houses stated that the units often contain bedbugs and "faulty plumbing".
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Rooming houses tend to be located in places close to access, amenities and markets. Specialist builders tend to build up to nine high-standard, low-maintenance micro apartments where once a single occupancy dwelling would have returned just one rental.
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In 2018, the city of Ottawa (Ontario) created rules to limit the number of bedrooms in newly built houses, to prevent the creation of houses with five to eight bedrooms, which can become illegal rooming houses, colloquially known as "bunkhouses".
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In one Ottawa study, more than 50% of the occupants in rooming houses were found to have mental health diagnoses. A 1998 study of
Toronto rooming house residents found that they had poorer health than the general population and low incomes.
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the number of rooming houses that are available, as landlords may choose not to apply for and pay the fees for a city licence, and complete the needed safety requirements (sprinklers, fire escapes, etc.).
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Groth, Paul. Living
Downtown: The History of Residential Hotels in the United States. Chapter Four—Rooming Houses and the Margins of Respectability. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994.
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living together, often in an existing house, and sharing a kitchen, bathroom (in most cases), and a living room or dining room. Rooming houses in this way are similar to
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Hwang SW, Martin RE, Tolomiczenko GS, Hulchanski JD. "The relationship between housing conditions and health status of rooming house residents in Toronto".
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An article about rooming houses in Montreal stated that rooming houses are the "last stop before the street" for low-income people at risk of homelessness.
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standards bylaw requires at least one bathroom for 10 residents (some health researchers have called for one bathroom for every four tenants).
867:. From 1977 to 1987, Montreal lost about 40% of its rooming houses, which has created a shortage in affordable housing for low-income people.
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Mifflin, E., & Wilton, R. (2005). "No place like home: Rooming houses in contemporary urban context".
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A picture of a rooming house and floor plan for Moore's Rooming House in Elko, Nevada.
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1201:"Toronto's Suburban Rooming Houses: Just a Spin on a Downtown "Problem""
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Out of the Long Dark Hallway: Voices from Winnipeg’s Rooming Houses
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Prior to the 1920s, commercial rooming houses were often former
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883:, UK-specific term for rooming houses with specific legislation
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903:. Social Services and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
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The Liverpool House, a rooming house in Seattle, in 1909.
1106:"New rooming house rules take aim at number of bedrooms"
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981:. Somerset West Community Health Centre. November 2016
1078:"Stone Horizon - Specialist Rooming House Builder"
1052:"Rooming houses are last stop before the street"
899:Distasio, J., Dudley, M., Maunder, M. (2002).
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32:The examples and perspective in this article
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947:. Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives
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70:Learn how and when to remove this message
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282:Affordability in the United States
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1172:Rainford, Lisa (27 March 2013).
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939:McCracken, Molly (27 May 2014).
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1094:. 2003 Nov–Dec; 94(6):436–440.
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1104:Osman, Laura (22 May 2018).
881:House in multiple occupation
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1208:www.wellesleyinstitute.com
945:www.policyalternatives.ca
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1056:montrealgazette.com
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170:Green home
1180:. Toronto
794:Subsidies
756:Residents
743:Condition
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607:Log house
487:Redlining
237:Flophouse
150:Apartment
48:talk page
875:See also
737:roommate
597:Hospital
547:Boomtown
427:Vagrancy
317:Eviction
302:planning
195:Tenement
165:Ecohouse
155:Bungalow
145:terraced
135:detached
99:a series
97:Part of
42:You may
803:History
185:I-house
160:Cottage
627:Prison
412:living
377:Permit
307:racism
297:design
270:Issues
222:Castle
216:Hostel
1204:(PDF)
1112:. CBC
1020:(PDF)
975:(PDF)
530:Other
517:YIMBY
457:NIMBY
257:Villa
242:Shack
232:Squat
211:Hotel
190:Ranch
131:House
50:, or
1216:2018
1186:2018
1118:2018
1064:2018
1032:2018
987:2018
953:2018
382:Rent
247:Slum
124:Main
1232::
1206:.
1176:.
1126:^
1108:.
1054:.
1040:^
1022:.
995:^
977:.
961:^
943:.
923:^
718:A
133::
101:on
1218:.
1188:.
1120:.
1080:.
1066:.
1034:.
989:.
955:.
707:e
700:t
693:v
73:)
67:(
62:)
58:(
40:.
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