Nicholas Kristof shines light on one housing solution growing out of Houston and slowly expanding across the country. The idea of boarding houses can often be seen in movies about the past, people...
Nicholas Kristof shines light on one housing solution growing out of Houston and slowly expanding across the country. The idea of boarding houses can often be seen in movies about the past, people of low income renting one room in a larger building, but these have all but disappeared in the US. Somehow the privileged American ideal that everyone deserves to have their own complete living space has taken over but is not a norm shared by most of the rest of the developed world, where even median income single adults routinely live in either shared accommodation or apartments much smaller than Americans would find comfortable. While living standards in the US remain higher than other countries and many people enjoy larger living spaces than their counterparts across the world, this comes at the expense of lower income individuals who would much prefer a small one room apartment with shared bathroom and kitchen than being on the street. Concerns about exploitation will be valid as this trend continues to grow, we don't want to go back to the indigent living in squalid apartments provided by landlords that prey on their weakness, but maybe a balance can be found with the endorsement of and regulation by state and local governments.
Ya know, having watched Hey Arnold back in the day, I'd often wondered what happened to boarding houses. Admittedly before this article I'd never heard of a rooming house (my phone didn't even...
Ya know, having watched Hey Arnold back in the day, I'd often wondered what happened to boarding houses. Admittedly before this article I'd never heard of a rooming house (my phone didn't even believe rooming was the word I wanted) but my thought was always the 'board' part made it unappealing. Having to live in the house, cook large meals, and provide shelter to a bunch of people coming and going was a lot of work!
Even providing a room to people back in the day meant you would need to be available to meditate disputes. I love the idea and don't want to hunt for the gray cloud here but I'd honestly prefer if boarding/rooming houses were required to be managed by someone local and direct. The fact that the owners used to live with you would help keep incidents down - and many among us have had experiences with bad roommates, myself included, that make the idea of a shared kitchen unpalatable.
I mean.... while I wouldn't necessarily state that single-family homes should be the norm (though having been raised in them it's uncomfortable to think about anything else)... I do think everyone...
everyone deserves to have their own complete living space
I mean.... while I wouldn't necessarily state that single-family homes should be the norm (though having been raised in them it's uncomfortable to think about anything else)...
I do think everyone deserves to have a place to call their own. Not one that depends on the whims of roommates and landlords. Ownership over one's personal space is a huge enabler of autonomy, one we should strive to achieve (whether via co-operative housing or other means).
Trying to rebrand subletting into something else is weird. If we need housing density, lets stop being afraid to tear down single-families in high-demand dense areas....tear them down and build proper housing. Or at least proper boarding houses, which would have larger facilities like bathrooms, public spaces, and kitchens than normal houses.
Yeah no I don't think this is remotely as true as you present it as. If by "shared accommodation" you mean "having housemates", this is not uncommon for median-income single adults in the US,...
Somehow the privileged American ideal that everyone deserves to have their own complete living space has taken over but is not a norm shared by most of the rest of the developed world, where even median income single adults routinely live in either shared accommodation or apartments much smaller than Americans would find comfortable.
Yeah no I don't think this is remotely as true as you present it as. If by "shared accommodation" you mean "having housemates", this is not uncommon for median-income single adults in the US, especially in cities. If what you mean is boarding house-style housing like this article presents, it absolutely is not particularly common in the parts of Europe I've lived in, outside of student accommodation (a domain where this type of "dorm-style" housing is also common in the US).
Apartment size is probably smaller on average in Europe but I think calling it "much smaller than Americans would find comfortable" is definitely an exaggeration (and as an American living in Europe, I have firsthand experience here). Here in Berlin even with price going up rapidly over the past several years you get about as much space for your money as you would renting an apartment in one of Ohio's big cities -- and you certainly get more space for your money than you would in a more expensive coastal US city. I don't think I've seen any apartment on offer here that's genuinely "much smaller than Americans would find comfortable" outside of student housing or the overpriced "furnished temporary housing in trendy neighborhoods for expats who don't want to flathunt" market. Certainly some are smaller than some Americans would find comfortable, but that's always a matter of personal preference and what you're willing to tolerate. There are tiny cheap studios in US cities that are of equivalent size to their Berlin counterparts, for sure, and there are larger, more spacious flats available for those with more money to spend in Europe.
I think there is a disconnect between what I'm saying and what you're responding to, I think I could have worded it a lot better. I'm admittedly a little out of touch, not having lived in the US...
I think there is a disconnect between what I'm saying and what you're responding to, I think I could have worded it a lot better.
I'm admittedly a little out of touch, not having lived in the US for ten years now, but looking at the statistics Germany certainly does have a higher percentage of people living with roommates (WG) than in the US (roughly 35% vs 18% (2017 vs 2015, respectively, census data lags). Perhaps in cities they are more equivalent but taken as whole countries there definitely is a disparity and Germany is also a leading economy in Europe so I'm sure that disparity rises when looking at other countries.
Also, only 27% of Americans live in multiple family units wheras over 50% of Germans live in "apartment" style buildings, not only in big cities but also in smaller towns and villages where this type of housing is popular. Americans treasure the idea of a large single family home and would think it a lower standard to live in an 800 sqft apartment.
there are larger, more spacious flats available for those with more money to spend in Europe
Where the average monthly income, in a large city, is around 3000 Euro per month - those larger spacious flats are entirely out of reach for most single adults.
The problem here is that your comparison is Berlin against "big American cities," both of which are total outliers and don't consider the situation in their respective countries as a whole. As an American also living in one of Germany's largest cities, the situation I see here compared with the US are not at all comparable. Maybe the situation in Berlin is somewhow different but I am having a hard time believing that
I really don't need to be educated about how Americans value single-family homes -- I, as an American, am well-aware of that. I don't dispute that, on average, it's more common to live in...
I really don't need to be educated about how Americans value single-family homes -- I, as an American, am well-aware of that. I don't dispute that, on average, it's more common to live in apartments and with roommates here, but the original comment I responded to presented this as though it's unheard of in the US, which is not remotely true. Moreover, it's a bizarre way to frame the differences between the countries in an article about a style of housing that is not common in either place. The averages are definitely different, but the options available in Germany and in the US are not completely foreign to each other.
You claim my comparison is against "big American cities" and that these are outliers. But I deliberately compared Berlin, a city in which it is pretty much actually impossible to live in a single family home, to major cities in my home state of Ohio, where housing is FAR cheaper than in much of the US. If these cities are all outliers, they are outliers in ways that make them support my point less than if I had chosen US cities like NYC and smaller less urbanized cities in Germany.
I absolutely do not dispute that there are big differences in the housing choices overall throughout Germany vs the US. But the idea that Americans are not frequently using shared accomodations and small apartments when they can't afford the single-family home ideal is just not true. And it's especially not true that the type of housing described in this article is more common in at least Germany -- if it's common elsewhere in Europe, I've never heard of it.
Americans want and do choose to live in bigger housing and alone at rates that are just not common across the rest of the developed world (with a few exceptions). The fact that the US is...
Americans want and do choose to live in bigger housing and alone at rates that are just not common across the rest of the developed world (with a few exceptions). The fact that the US is experiencing a housing crisis is directly exacerbated by the way that the people living there choose to live. The argument is not about boarding houses, which you are right are not common in the developed world, but about how the American priveledge to higher living standards makes access to housing for those earning less more limited than in other parts of the developed world. It frames the argument that if Americans were willing to lower their standard of living, including adopting radical options like boarding houses, that would help to aleviate a crisis that contributes to overwhelming homeless rates which the article addresses.
Ignoring what sounds like an needlessly aggressive tone in your response, I just don't think you see how these things are connected to each other and how your observations are not supported by the data
but the original comment I responded to presented this as though it's unheard of in the US
I'll add emphasis to my original statement:
is not a norm shared by most of the rest of the developed world, where even median income single adults routinely live in either shared accommodation or apartments much smaller than Americans would find comfortable
Please elaborate on how that presents by any means the argument that having roommates is unheard of in the US, that is a notion that you seem to have inserted into what I actually said
You're reading this into my comments, and I don't particularly appreciate the condescending insistence that I'm coming to this discussion out of either ignorance or hostility. That's not a...
Ignoring what sounds like an needlessly aggressive tone in your response
You're reading this into my comments, and I don't particularly appreciate the condescending insistence that I'm coming to this discussion out of either ignorance or hostility. That's not a charitable reading of my comments, and if it's not possible to have a discussion where we disagree without you projecting malicious intent into my comments, I don't know how much longer this conversation can be productive.
My argument throughout this comment chain has been that while there are differences in the proportions of people living in shared accomodation and apartments, these don't represent the huge paradigm shift you're framing it as. I fail to see how that argument isn't supported by "the data". Just because I disagree on the implications of the statistics here doesn't mean my argument runs contrary to those statistics. It is possible for two people to disagree on the interpretation of particular statistics without either of their interpretations necessarily running contrary to the data.
You simultaneously make claims that Americans have a "higher standard of living" and that there are more options for those with lower income in Europe without presenting any data to that effect. A larger proportion of people living in shared accomodation and/or apartments doesn't necessarily mean it will be easier for lower income people to access these. Berlin (and afaik most other large German cities) id a great example of this, as the current low availability of housing makes it extremely difficult to find apartments the lower your budget is. The availability of affordable apartments is not necessarily directly related to the demand for them -- I guarantee I'd have a much easier time finding a place to rent for a low price in Cleveland than here in Berlin. There are a myriad of factors at play here other than just the proportion of people willing to live in apartments (and I dispute the assumption that apartments are necessarily a "lower standard of living" than single-family homes, since there's plenty of other factors that play into how good particular housing is other than that. But that's orthogonal to my point.)
Without the programs to subsidize housing for those with low income here in Germany, it certainly wouldn't be true that it's easier to access affordable housing here. The idea that it's just willingness to occupy certain types of housing is the only or even the principle cause of issues accessing affordable housing erases much more important contributing factors like this.
I'm going to disengage because you're moving the goal posts every time, your argument isn't consistent and seems execisively contrarian to me. If I truly am reading into the tone of your comments...
I'm going to disengage because you're moving the goal posts every time, your argument isn't consistent and seems execisively contrarian to me. If I truly am reading into the tone of your comments and being uncharitable, then I owe you an apology, but I think it would be helpful to reflect on some of your choices of words and how you've used them in your reply. Have a great day
As a neutral and really rather uninterested spectator, I too read your "I really don't need to be educated about ..." as rude and nasty, and find your comment quoted at the top of my post here to...
You're reading this into my comments, and I don't particularly appreciate the condescending insistence
As a neutral and really rather uninterested spectator, I too read your "I really don't need to be educated about ..." as rude and nasty, and find your comment quoted at the top of my post here to be equally unnecessarily aggressive. I feel it's worthwhile to post this not to further irritate you, but rather just in hope you'll reevaluate your pose.
TLDR: Convert single-family houses to rooming houses. House located close to public transit. Rooms are rented by the week and are cheaper than motels. Lots of promotional materials for an app that...
TLDR: Convert single-family houses to rooming houses. House located close to public transit. Rooms are rented by the week and are cheaper than motels. Lots of promotional materials for an app that services this market segment.
Here's a question: Why should we encourage this rather than eliminating the need for it? The only space that exists between month-to-month apartments and up to a week is a few weeks at a time....
Here's a question: Why should we encourage this rather than eliminating the need for it? The only space that exists between month-to-month apartments and up to a week is a few weeks at a time. Heck, you can easily find fully-furnished month-to-month apartment rentals now in many urban areas (though admittedly not always terribly affordable).
But Motels and Hotels often offer weekly rates. There's nothing this offers other than being poorly regulated, which means fewer protections for tenants. Nearby motel to me, in an area where rents run $2,400 a month, costs about $250 a week, for a 2 double-bed room with a private bathroom. And they'll even swap your sheets and towels for you! There's even seedier ones you can't find online.
And if you've ever stayed in a seedy motel, you'll stay away from this like the plague...unless of course that's what happens with all these properties investors snapped up and few other options are available.
A friend of mine last year ran into housing troubles in Oakland and needed housing ASAP. He turned to such a week-by-week hotel that catered to medium-stay clientele. It was a bit seedy. But it...
A friend of mine last year ran into housing troubles in Oakland and needed housing ASAP. He turned to such a week-by-week hotel that catered to medium-stay clientele. It was a bit seedy. But it was not expensive.
He stayed there for ~2 months until he could figure out a new living situation.
These kinds of places offer flexibility and are housing 'glue' for lower-income people who can't afford to pad in overlapping rental periods or check into a retail hotel. You can get a key the same or next day, and you're only on the hook to pay for the week.
I wonder if this is intended to be a replacement for properties investors snapped up for Airbnb but have since realized aren't earning enough money back from that scheme. It certainly seems eerily...
I wonder if this is intended to be a replacement for properties investors snapped up for Airbnb but have since realized aren't earning enough money back from that scheme. It certainly seems eerily similar to that setup -- the article itself compares PadSplit to Airbnb -- and it's not uncommon to see sketchy Airbnb ads for month-to-month (often illegally sublet) apartments in urban areas here in Europe.
Having recently sought ought fully furnished living space due to an insurance issue...they are not easy to find outside of short term AirBnB. When they are available they are prohibitively...
Having recently sought ought fully furnished living space due to an insurance issue...they are not easy to find outside of short term AirBnB. When they are available they are prohibitively expense...think corporate apartment pricing and I'm in a large, medium cost of living city in the US.
I think the boarding house idea, if managed well and locally, is one that is potentially a good idea. Many folks in American Universities lived in communal dorms so the idea is at least palatable to the masses in some form/fashion.
In case you're wondering: I think this is the sort of thing that works when it works, but it relies on trust. Being able to move easily would make it easier for tenants to accept some risk. (This...
In case you're wondering:
Rooming houses are quite different from the practice of young professionals having housemates in cities like New York and Boston. PadSplit rooms are often cheaper (partly because there aren’t shared living areas), management is by a company rather than the residents, and payment is by the week to make it more workable for people living paycheck by paycheck. S.R.O.s were often squalid, but PadSplit is trying to elevate the experience.
I think this is the sort of thing that works when it works, but it relies on trust. Being able to move easily would make it easier for tenants to accept some risk. (This is similar to how easy returns make consumers more willing to accept risk on a purchase.) But that assumes there are decent alternatives.
A problem tenant could drive other tenants away unless the landlord acts promptly on complaints. High turnover would mean more overhead vetting tenants, resulting in higher prices than a more stable situation.
Having your own place means less trust is necessary; there's less that a bad neighbor could do. Not having any pressing reason to know the people who live near you is a luxury that many people seem to prefer and will pay for, but a downside is isolation and loneliness.
Nicholas Kristof shines light on one housing solution growing out of Houston and slowly expanding across the country. The idea of boarding houses can often be seen in movies about the past, people of low income renting one room in a larger building, but these have all but disappeared in the US. Somehow the privileged American ideal that everyone deserves to have their own complete living space has taken over but is not a norm shared by most of the rest of the developed world, where even median income single adults routinely live in either shared accommodation or apartments much smaller than Americans would find comfortable. While living standards in the US remain higher than other countries and many people enjoy larger living spaces than their counterparts across the world, this comes at the expense of lower income individuals who would much prefer a small one room apartment with shared bathroom and kitchen than being on the street. Concerns about exploitation will be valid as this trend continues to grow, we don't want to go back to the indigent living in squalid apartments provided by landlords that prey on their weakness, but maybe a balance can be found with the endorsement of and regulation by state and local governments.
Ya know, having watched Hey Arnold back in the day, I'd often wondered what happened to boarding houses. Admittedly before this article I'd never heard of a rooming house (my phone didn't even believe rooming was the word I wanted) but my thought was always the 'board' part made it unappealing. Having to live in the house, cook large meals, and provide shelter to a bunch of people coming and going was a lot of work!
Even providing a room to people back in the day meant you would need to be available to meditate disputes. I love the idea and don't want to hunt for the gray cloud here but I'd honestly prefer if boarding/rooming houses were required to be managed by someone local and direct. The fact that the owners used to live with you would help keep incidents down - and many among us have had experiences with bad roommates, myself included, that make the idea of a shared kitchen unpalatable.
I mean.... while I wouldn't necessarily state that single-family homes should be the norm (though having been raised in them it's uncomfortable to think about anything else)...
I do think everyone deserves to have a place to call their own. Not one that depends on the whims of roommates and landlords. Ownership over one's personal space is a huge enabler of autonomy, one we should strive to achieve (whether via co-operative housing or other means).
Trying to rebrand subletting into something else is weird. If we need housing density, lets stop being afraid to tear down single-families in high-demand dense areas....tear them down and build proper housing. Or at least proper boarding houses, which would have larger facilities like bathrooms, public spaces, and kitchens than normal houses.
Yeah no I don't think this is remotely as true as you present it as. If by "shared accommodation" you mean "having housemates", this is not uncommon for median-income single adults in the US, especially in cities. If what you mean is boarding house-style housing like this article presents, it absolutely is not particularly common in the parts of Europe I've lived in, outside of student accommodation (a domain where this type of "dorm-style" housing is also common in the US).
Apartment size is probably smaller on average in Europe but I think calling it "much smaller than Americans would find comfortable" is definitely an exaggeration (and as an American living in Europe, I have firsthand experience here). Here in Berlin even with price going up rapidly over the past several years you get about as much space for your money as you would renting an apartment in one of Ohio's big cities -- and you certainly get more space for your money than you would in a more expensive coastal US city. I don't think I've seen any apartment on offer here that's genuinely "much smaller than Americans would find comfortable" outside of student housing or the overpriced "furnished temporary housing in trendy neighborhoods for expats who don't want to flathunt" market. Certainly some are smaller than some Americans would find comfortable, but that's always a matter of personal preference and what you're willing to tolerate. There are tiny cheap studios in US cities that are of equivalent size to their Berlin counterparts, for sure, and there are larger, more spacious flats available for those with more money to spend in Europe.
I think there is a disconnect between what I'm saying and what you're responding to, I think I could have worded it a lot better.
I'm admittedly a little out of touch, not having lived in the US for ten years now, but looking at the statistics Germany certainly does have a higher percentage of people living with roommates (WG) than in the US (roughly 35% vs 18% (2017 vs 2015, respectively, census data lags). Perhaps in cities they are more equivalent but taken as whole countries there definitely is a disparity and Germany is also a leading economy in Europe so I'm sure that disparity rises when looking at other countries.
Also, only 27% of Americans live in multiple family units wheras over 50% of Germans live in "apartment" style buildings, not only in big cities but also in smaller towns and villages where this type of housing is popular. Americans treasure the idea of a large single family home and would think it a lower standard to live in an 800 sqft apartment.
Where the average monthly income, in a large city, is around 3000 Euro per month - those larger spacious flats are entirely out of reach for most single adults.
The problem here is that your comparison is Berlin against "big American cities," both of which are total outliers and don't consider the situation in their respective countries as a whole. As an American also living in one of Germany's largest cities, the situation I see here compared with the US are not at all comparable. Maybe the situation in Berlin is somewhow different but I am having a hard time believing that
I really don't need to be educated about how Americans value single-family homes -- I, as an American, am well-aware of that. I don't dispute that, on average, it's more common to live in apartments and with roommates here, but the original comment I responded to presented this as though it's unheard of in the US, which is not remotely true. Moreover, it's a bizarre way to frame the differences between the countries in an article about a style of housing that is not common in either place. The averages are definitely different, but the options available in Germany and in the US are not completely foreign to each other.
You claim my comparison is against "big American cities" and that these are outliers. But I deliberately compared Berlin, a city in which it is pretty much actually impossible to live in a single family home, to major cities in my home state of Ohio, where housing is FAR cheaper than in much of the US. If these cities are all outliers, they are outliers in ways that make them support my point less than if I had chosen US cities like NYC and smaller less urbanized cities in Germany.
I absolutely do not dispute that there are big differences in the housing choices overall throughout Germany vs the US. But the idea that Americans are not frequently using shared accomodations and small apartments when they can't afford the single-family home ideal is just not true. And it's especially not true that the type of housing described in this article is more common in at least Germany -- if it's common elsewhere in Europe, I've never heard of it.
Americans want and do choose to live in bigger housing and alone at rates that are just not common across the rest of the developed world (with a few exceptions). The fact that the US is experiencing a housing crisis is directly exacerbated by the way that the people living there choose to live. The argument is not about boarding houses, which you are right are not common in the developed world, but about how the American priveledge to higher living standards makes access to housing for those earning less more limited than in other parts of the developed world. It frames the argument that if Americans were willing to lower their standard of living, including adopting radical options like boarding houses, that would help to aleviate a crisis that contributes to overwhelming homeless rates which the article addresses.
Ignoring what sounds like an needlessly aggressive tone in your response, I just don't think you see how these things are connected to each other and how your observations are not supported by the data
I'll add emphasis to my original statement:
Please elaborate on how that presents by any means the argument that having roommates is unheard of in the US, that is a notion that you seem to have inserted into what I actually said
You're reading this into my comments, and I don't particularly appreciate the condescending insistence that I'm coming to this discussion out of either ignorance or hostility. That's not a charitable reading of my comments, and if it's not possible to have a discussion where we disagree without you projecting malicious intent into my comments, I don't know how much longer this conversation can be productive.
My argument throughout this comment chain has been that while there are differences in the proportions of people living in shared accomodation and apartments, these don't represent the huge paradigm shift you're framing it as. I fail to see how that argument isn't supported by "the data". Just because I disagree on the implications of the statistics here doesn't mean my argument runs contrary to those statistics. It is possible for two people to disagree on the interpretation of particular statistics without either of their interpretations necessarily running contrary to the data.
You simultaneously make claims that Americans have a "higher standard of living" and that there are more options for those with lower income in Europe without presenting any data to that effect. A larger proportion of people living in shared accomodation and/or apartments doesn't necessarily mean it will be easier for lower income people to access these. Berlin (and afaik most other large German cities) id a great example of this, as the current low availability of housing makes it extremely difficult to find apartments the lower your budget is. The availability of affordable apartments is not necessarily directly related to the demand for them -- I guarantee I'd have a much easier time finding a place to rent for a low price in Cleveland than here in Berlin. There are a myriad of factors at play here other than just the proportion of people willing to live in apartments (and I dispute the assumption that apartments are necessarily a "lower standard of living" than single-family homes, since there's plenty of other factors that play into how good particular housing is other than that. But that's orthogonal to my point.)
Without the programs to subsidize housing for those with low income here in Germany, it certainly wouldn't be true that it's easier to access affordable housing here. The idea that it's just willingness to occupy certain types of housing is the only or even the principle cause of issues accessing affordable housing erases much more important contributing factors like this.
I'm going to disengage because you're moving the goal posts every time, your argument isn't consistent and seems execisively contrarian to me. If I truly am reading into the tone of your comments and being uncharitable, then I owe you an apology, but I think it would be helpful to reflect on some of your choices of words and how you've used them in your reply. Have a great day
As a neutral and really rather uninterested spectator, I too read your "I really don't need to be educated about ..." as rude and nasty, and find your comment quoted at the top of my post here to be equally unnecessarily aggressive. I feel it's worthwhile to post this not to further irritate you, but rather just in hope you'll reevaluate your pose.
TLDR: Convert single-family houses to rooming houses. House located close to public transit. Rooms are rented by the week and are cheaper than motels. Lots of promotional materials for an app that services this market segment.
Oh yea, what's better than a stable fixed, but high rent? High rent that changes week over week and scales up to infinity because it's not regulated!
Here's a question: Why should we encourage this rather than eliminating the need for it? The only space that exists between month-to-month apartments and up to a week is a few weeks at a time. Heck, you can easily find fully-furnished month-to-month apartment rentals now in many urban areas (though admittedly not always terribly affordable).
But Motels and Hotels often offer weekly rates. There's nothing this offers other than being poorly regulated, which means fewer protections for tenants. Nearby motel to me, in an area where rents run $2,400 a month, costs about $250 a week, for a 2 double-bed room with a private bathroom. And they'll even swap your sheets and towels for you! There's even seedier ones you can't find online.
And if you've ever stayed in a seedy motel, you'll stay away from this like the plague...unless of course that's what happens with all these properties investors snapped up and few other options are available.
A friend of mine last year ran into housing troubles in Oakland and needed housing ASAP. He turned to such a week-by-week hotel that catered to medium-stay clientele. It was a bit seedy. But it was not expensive.
He stayed there for ~2 months until he could figure out a new living situation.
These kinds of places offer flexibility and are housing 'glue' for lower-income people who can't afford to pad in overlapping rental periods or check into a retail hotel. You can get a key the same or next day, and you're only on the hook to pay for the week.
I wonder if this is intended to be a replacement for properties investors snapped up for Airbnb but have since realized aren't earning enough money back from that scheme. It certainly seems eerily similar to that setup -- the article itself compares PadSplit to Airbnb -- and it's not uncommon to see sketchy Airbnb ads for month-to-month (often illegally sublet) apartments in urban areas here in Europe.
Having recently sought ought fully furnished living space due to an insurance issue...they are not easy to find outside of short term AirBnB. When they are available they are prohibitively expense...think corporate apartment pricing and I'm in a large, medium cost of living city in the US.
I think the boarding house idea, if managed well and locally, is one that is potentially a good idea. Many folks in American Universities lived in communal dorms so the idea is at least palatable to the masses in some form/fashion.
In case you're wondering:
I think this is the sort of thing that works when it works, but it relies on trust. Being able to move easily would make it easier for tenants to accept some risk. (This is similar to how easy returns make consumers more willing to accept risk on a purchase.) But that assumes there are decent alternatives.
A problem tenant could drive other tenants away unless the landlord acts promptly on complaints. High turnover would mean more overhead vetting tenants, resulting in higher prices than a more stable situation.
Having your own place means less trust is necessary; there's less that a bad neighbor could do. Not having any pressing reason to know the people who live near you is a luxury that many people seem to prefer and will pay for, but a downside is isolation and loneliness.