Get ready to squeeze into a shoebox: Tiny apartments get the go-ahead in SF

San Francisco, if you felt a collective tightening around your waistband late last month, it wasn’t the result of all the holiday sugar you’ve been consuming at the office (knock that off, by the way). Rather, we all just got squeezed into smaller living quarters.

The city has approved a limited number of apartments to be built at just 220 square feet in size. The micro-scale development will push down rental rates (well, sort of – they’re still going to be $1500 a month), make compact building footprints viable and establish a potentially dangerous trend. We disagree with the Chronicle’s editorial position that this sort of apartment construction should be given the green light to move forward unchecked.

Because if a developer can make a big profit building a unit of that size, what’s to motivate them to build something much bigger – other than inflated profit margins? If 375 renters will settle for a home the size of a hotel suite, perhaps thousands more will do the same. And we’ll all be eventually living in smaller, more cramped spaces as a result.

One of the reasons that this trend toward uncomfortably small places to sleep is happening is apparently because so many of us – 40 percent, by one estimate – live alone. There’s some disturbing logic here whereby it is somehow OK to lock a single person into a super tiny apartment (and forget about them) that I do not like one bit. I think it’s healthier not to be able to see every inch of my apartment when I walk in the front door, and that means it needs to be  more than one room.

Provisions in the newly approved apartment development regulations do a few things to try to put the brakes on ruining all renters’ lives, but not much. The little apartments in the city are supposed to have separate kitchens and bathrooms. They will be studied for feasibility after 325 have been constructed and occupied (the current development cap allows for 375 of the units.)

We suggest that the city go ahead and get started on those study efforts right now, by talking to people who live in San Francisco rentals and assessing whether or not this type of construction is something that our city wants or needs. Tell us your views  – is this a good thing for our city?