A housing model that American cities spent decades zoning out of existence is finding new advocates. Across the country, lawmakers, nonprofits, and housing reformers are working to revive single-room occupancy units, the modern descendant of the boardinghouse, as a low-cost option for the millions of Americans squeezed by rising rents. The push, the subject of recent national coverage including a segment from NPR’s The Indicator, reflects a growing consensus that part of the affordability solution may lie in a form of housing the country abandoned.
Single-room occupancy units, commonly called SROs, typically consist of a small private room, often between 100 and 300 square feet, with shared kitchens and bathrooms down the hall. Each tenant holds an individual lease, frequently on a month-to-month or weekly basis. The arrangement strips housing down to its most affordable form, eliminating the cost of a private kitchen and bath that makes a conventional studio apartment far more expensive to build and rent.
From Ubiquity To Prohibition
The model is not new. Boardinghouses and residential hotels were a standard feature of American cities in the early 20th century, providing flexible, low-cost shelter for workers, students, and new arrivals during periods of rapid population growth. In New York City alone, more than 100,000 such units once existed. Today, only an estimated 30,000 to 40,000 remain.
The decline was deliberate. Over roughly 75 years, cities associated SROs with crime, poverty, and quality-of-life complaints, and responded with zoning codes, building regulations, and occupancy rules that effectively banned new construction. At the federal level, the main program built specifically for SRO housing, the Section 8 Moderate Rehabilitation SRO Program, was repealed by Congress in 1991, and no new federally subsidized SRO projects have been funded since. The result was the quiet elimination of the cheapest rung on the housing ladder, just as the cost of everything above it climbed.
A Coordinated Push To Bring Them Back
What distinguishes the current moment is the organized, multi-state nature of the revival effort. The Institute for Justice, a public-interest law firm, has drafted model legislation it calls the Restoring Options in Occupancy Models Act, or ROOM Act, and has begun lobbying states to adopt it. The bill is designed to legalize co-living and single-room arrangements ranging from a rented spare bedroom to small boardinghouses to converted offices, and to override the zoning and code barriers that have kept them illegal.
The template draws on a Washington State law that requires cities and counties to permit single-room occupancy or co-living housing in areas already zoned for multifamily development. Oregon followed with its own measure giving SRO housing legal status and requiring cities to allow the units in many residential areas. Portland, the state’s largest city, has launched a yearlong SRO pilot, paired with a program offering cash incentives to homeowners who rent spare rooms to lower-income tenants. In New York, a proposed City Council bill would revive SRO construction while attaching safety standards, such as limiting the number of units sharing a single kitchen or bathroom, intended to prevent a return to the overcrowded conditions that gave the model its stigma.
Why The Idea Is Spreading
The appeal cuts across the usual political lines, drawing support from housing advocates focused on homelessness and from market-oriented reformers focused on supply. That breadth reflects a shift in who needs cheap housing. The share of Americans living alone has been rising, and for a single person, a full apartment is often more space and more expense than necessary. An SRO offers an option priced for one, available on flexible terms.
For the broader housing market, the economic logic is straightforward. SRO units are among the least expensive housing to build because they share the most costly components, and they can be added through conversions of existing buildings, including underused offices and hotels, without the time and capital of ground-up construction. Advocates frame them not as a replacement for family housing but as a missing tier, one that can absorb demand from students, seasonal workers, fixed-income residents, and people transitioning out of homelessness.
The Road Ahead
The revival faces real obstacles. The same neighborhood resistance and safety concerns that drove SROs out of existence have not disappeared, and new laws must balance affordability against habitability to avoid recreating the conditions that earned the model its reputation. Translating state authorization into actual units also depends on local implementation, where zoning fights and permitting delays can stall progress.
Still, the momentum is notable for a housing type written off as a relic a generation ago. As cities search for fixes to an affordability crisis that conventional construction has not solved, the boardinghouse, reimagined with modern standards, is being reconsidered as a practical and immediately available piece of the answer.
