In San Francisco, $1,600 a month in rent pays for even less micro-apartment square footage than it is expected to in Boston.
Hub developers and city regulators have talked about what 450-square-foot micro-apartments, now under construction in the Boston Seaport, might look like. Rents are said to be likely about $1,600 a month. Today the Boston Globe offers a glimpse of what that figure gets you in a San Francisco micro-unit.
Read more: City officials and developers put on a micro-housing forum, Tuesday.
According to the Globe, $1,600 a month pays for about 295 square feet on 38 Harriet Street, South of Market. "The room becomes an obstacle course if so much as a pair of boots are dropped on the floor; at night, multiple chairs must be moved to make way for the fold-down Murphy bed," the Globe's Casey Ross writes. "And because the bed rests on the dining table, failing to clear the dishes has dire consequences."
Micro-apartments are aimed at young professionals who want to live and work close to downtown. For now, San Francisco officials have capped the number of market-priced micro-apartments in the city at 375, the Globe reports.
That may not be the case in Boston, where Mayor Thomas Menino on Monday announced a goal to see 30,000 new housing units built by the year 2020.