NO one in New York has any privacy. But would you be willing to share a bathroom with that guy down the hall to save a buck?

A number of young New Yorkers who want to live alone but cannot afford it have settled on just that sort of compromise: renting a room and sharing facilities like kitchens and bathrooms with neighbors.

Jessica Duffett, 25, an assistant and archivist at an art gallery, shares the top floor of a brownstone in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, with a woman who she estimates is about 10 years her senior. They have separate apartments, each with a kitchenette, but the bathroom is in the hallway beyond the locks on their front doors.

“I tell everyone, when they say, ‘Oh, you live in a dorm,’ no, I prefer pension,” Ms. Duffett says with a grin and a self-mocking flick of a wrist. “You know, those European hotels where you have your bar of soap and your towel and you shuffle down the hallway.”

Call it what you will, but put on your pants before you grab your towel.

“There’s always been a tradition of this, especially for the lower end of the housing market,” said Alex Schwartz, the chairman of the department of urban policy analysis and management at the New School. “What you may see now is it’s extended up to portions of the housing market — people who previously wouldn’t live in this sort of unit.”

Many apartment buildings that require this kind of intimate cooperation have rough reputations that make them unappealing beyond the practical inconvenience of sharing a shower with half a dozen strangers — not an insignificant compromise in its own right. Single-room-occupancy buildings (rooming houses with six or more units) are often used as supportive housing for people coming out of homelessness or rehabilitation programs. Others are a landing pad for new immigrants. Some are quite grim, poorly run and badly maintained.

“It is easy to lump together good S.R.O.’s and bad ones,” says Dov Treiman, a lawyer and the editor of The Housing Court Reporter. “The most visible ones are those filling the almost last-ditch needs of the most needy in society.”

In recent years, as rental prices have gone up and up, students and young professionals have become more willing to live in rooming houses or other dorm-like arrangements, said Howard Feingold, the president of Best Apartments, a real estate company that specializes in affordable rentals. Mr. Feingold, who handles about a dozen dorm-style apartments a year, said young people have been willingly choosing to live in such places for several years.

“They want to live in the city,” Mr. Feingold said. “They want a less expensive option, and if they can get over the fact that they’re sharing a bathroom, and if they’re not home a lot, they’ll take them.”

He points out, however, that some of these buildings are much nicer than others.

Ms. Duffett’s apartment, for example, is on South Portland Street, which was named the best block in all of New York City by Time Out New York in 2006, based on criteria like aesthetics, amenities and train access. She has wide-beam hardwood floors, a decorative fireplace and a separate bedroom with a tin ceiling.

Ms. Duffett also has a small built-in community: the tenants who live in similar setups on the two floors below her. (The landlords live on the first floor.)

“Everybody looks out for each other,” Ms. Duffett said. “It’s sweet.”

A recent Craigslist search showed studios and one-bedrooms near Ms. Duffett’s apartment for $1,600 to $2,100. Ms. Duffett pays $1,450.

Friends of hers who used to live in the area have all been priced out. Because of her willingness to be seen in the hall in a bathrobe, she has been able to stay in the neighborhood she loves.

“I went to boarding school, I went to college and lived in dorms — I’ve never experienced the truly private apartment, private bathroom,” Ms. Duffett added. “This is more of the same.”

Sharing facilities with five others allows Davin Sweeney, a 28-year-old graduate student at Wagner School of Public Service of New York University, to cover his $750-a-month rent by bartending just a few nights a week. He has a bright, private room in an old mansion in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, as well as access to kitchens, bathrooms (there are three rooms, a kitchen and a bathroom on each of the first two floors) and a lush backyard. His landlords live in an apartment on the top floor.

“Sometimes, like everywhere else, the dishes pile up,” Mr. Sweeney said. “Everyone just has to pull their own weight, take the garbage out. We don’t have any rules about that, so the best thing is to be respectful and just do it. And for the most part, people are.”

The six tenants spend some time together, especially in the summertime when they bump into one another in the garden. But for the most part, they keep to themselves.

Continue reading…

By ELIZABETH A. HARRIS

Source: New York Times – U.S.A.