Boarding house
Especially for families on holiday with children, boarding (particularly on a full-board basis) was an inexpensive alternative and much cheaper than staying in all but the cheapest hotels.
[3] Boarding houses ran from large purpose-built buildings down to "genteel ladies," who rented a room or two as a way of earning a little extra money.
[3] The boarding house reinforced some social changes: it made it feasible for people to move to a large city and away from their families.
[3] Boarding houses were viewed as "brick-and-mortar chastity belts" for young unmarried women, which protected them from the vices in the city.
[4] The Jeanne d'Arc Residence in Chelsea, Manhattan, which was operated by an order of nuns, aimed to provide a dwelling space for young French seamstresses and nannies.
[3] While there is an association between boarding houses and women renters, men also rented, notably the poet-authors Walt Whitman and Edgar Allan Poe.
[4] 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.
[2] In 1936, the FHA Property Standards defined a dwelling as "any structure used principally for residential purposes" and noted 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.
[3] 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.
[clarification needed] Some such boarding houses allow large groups with low incomes to share overcrowded rooms or otherwise exploit people with problems rendering them vulnerable, such as those with irregular immigration status.
In Hawaii, where the cost of living is high and incomes barely keep pace,[citation needed] it is common to take in lodgers (who are boarders in English terminology) that share the burden of the overall rent or mortgage payable.
The rent can go higher for a room in an upscale locality with facilities like single occupancy, air conditioning, and high-speed wireless internet access.
