Sounds like Korbin Dallas' apartment in the movie "Fifth Element".
Posted on 11/12/2015 5:44:56 AM PST by equaviator
The Grand Rapids, MI, planning commission — which sees small apartments as a way to alleviate the city's affordable housing shortage — is adding the term "micro-unit" to its zoning ordinances and allowing developers to provide less vehicle parking than usually required in exchange for building them. Developers, however, must provide two bicycle parking spaces per unit.
Micro-units, the planning commission’s solution for people who make too much money to qualify for subsidized rent yet not enough to afford new, market-rate apartment, must be 475 square feet or smaller and be incorporated into a mixed-use commercial building, according to MLive.
Developers in Grand Rapids are already seeing high demand for the small apartments, in some cases advertised as "artist lofts" by developers. Max Benedict of Third Coast Development told MLive that seeing the response for the company's two available micro-units in downtown Grand Rapids was like "striking oil."
Providing developer incentives to build micro-units is "a market-based approach to get at affordable housing because if you're paying by square-footage, the smaller the unit the less you're going to pay," Suzanne Schulz, city planning director, told MLive.
"In an urban context,†she said, “your social life is outside your unit," she said. "(Your home) is a place to rest your head and maybe make a bowl of cereal."
Micro-homes, be it small apartments or tiny houses, are becoming the go-to affordable housing solution in many cities. Portland, OR, and Hawaii have both seen micro-apartment developments this year, and the tiny house movement is on the rise with lawmakers in Missouri, New Jersey and Washington, DC considering loosening regulations for, and sometimes encouraging the construction of, the smaller living spaces.
Sounds like Korbin Dallas' apartment in the movie "Fifth Element".
If you are a single guy or girl then I have no issue with this. a Small studio apartment in Grand Rapids, in a converted Victorian mansion, used to be 350 a month 11 years ago. A great deal for a college person or single.
But my fear is that our goofy new mayor will push some insane leftist angle that will make them mandatory or some crazy idea.
My 450 sq ft. apartment looks like a mansion next to one of those “super capsule” Chinese apartments.
475 sf? $2,000/mo in NYC.
That's the lifestyle that awaits low-income Germans as they absorb millions of muslim "guests" from Syria and other hellholes.
Certainly not saying they are not attractive...just one needs to consider how many people are going to end up as your “close neighbors!” A 2000 sq/ft space apartment splitting down to 500 sq/ft? That will be anywhere from 4 to 16 people now living there. I just don’t think this is at all psychologically healthy for a human being.
If these tiny spaces are not sound proof...it is a recipe for disaster.
They used to be called studios or efficiencies. It’s really not terribly innovative.
Motel 6's do have parking though. Reading this article reminds me of those model Chinese cities that no one lives in. Who is going to rent an apartment with only bicycle parking in Grand Rapids? If it were New York I might could see it, but Grand Rapids?
They'll end up forcing all their welfare cases to accept these apartments, thus preventing them from finding jobs because they can't have a car!
Yeah, you can be sure the “migrants” won’t settle for tiny apartments, they will riot and cut off the head of anyone who suggests that.
Try one of these.
No it’s not. It’s a sad reality that the traditional American Dream is fast-becoming obsolete and that the marketing strategy for these micro-apartments is to make it seem hip, smart and cool to minimalize expectations in America. Measurements of success have never been so dumbed down.
Ikea is overjoyed.
You are absolutely right and if this catches on it won’t be long before one of these glorified dorm rooms costs as much as a house.
Actually this fits very nicely into 0bama’s plans to get rid of the suburbs and force people into the city.
Huh? Sounds like a few of those old dictators when they drove people off the farms and into the city and factories of the communist state.
How so very Agenda 21 friendly don’t ya’ think?
Obama’s Plan to Eliminate Suburbs
http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2012/08/02/obama_s_plan_to_eliminate_suburbs
0bama’s War on the Suburbs
http://pjmedia.com/rogerkimball/2012/07/27/obama%e2%80%99s-war-on-the-suburbs/
While public attention has been riveted on high-profile congressional battles over the stimulus, health care, and the debt ceiling, Obama has been quietly laying the regulatory groundwork for a profound transformation of American society. The founders would not approve. From the Pilgrim fathers to the frontier settlers to the post-World War II exodus to the suburbs, Americans have enjoyed the freedom to move and to govern themselves as they have seen fit in their new homes. Yet the spirit of enterprise and self-government that made our country great looks very different to Obama.
In the eyes of Obama’s community organizing colleagues – close followers of Saul Alinsky, the leftist radical who founded the profession – America’s suburbs are instruments of bigotry and greed. Moving to a suburb in pursuit of the American dream of an affordable family home and quality, locally controlled schools looks to Obama and his organizing mentors like selfishly refusing to share tax money with the urban poor.
Obama means to fix that with regulations designed to force Americans out of their cars and into high-density urban centers, squeezing the population into a collection of new Manhattans. Obama also aims to force suburbanites to redistribute tax money to nearby cities while effectively merging urban and suburban school districts so as to equalize their funding. If you can afford to move to a suburban all, there will no longer be a point. In effect America’s cities will have swallowed up their suburbs. The result: your freedom of movement, America’s tradition of local self-rule, the incentive to better your circumstances, and therefore national prosperity all will have been eroded
The marketing strategy is part of the 0bama regime’s tackets to squelch the suburbs.
Note these developers are being “incentivized” to build these darn city prisons without guards. This is Agenda 21 stuff! They claim it is a market based approach, but if the markets was demanding these kinds of ‘homes,’ then they wouldn’t need incentives.
I agree with you. Tiny apts are one thing, but tiny free standing homes are another.
See if you can find them on HGTV.
They’re certainly not something I would want, as we have a very large family, but for 2 people, I think they could be comfortable.
Perhaps the rent could be 100% government subsidized. They could call them “Stay Free Mini Pads”.
Are we forgetting about the ‘property taxes’? The gubmint beast needs to be fed. Pay the ‘fair share’ of your glorified closet home to Uncle Sham.
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