Editing Boarding house (section)

== History ==
[[File:StateLibQld 1 258605 Maroochydore Boarding House, ca. 1917.jpg|thumb|Maroochydore Boarding House, Queensland, circa 1917]]
Boarding houses were common in most US cities throughout the 19th century and until the 1950s.<ref name="Graham">{{Cite news|url=https://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2013/01/13/boardinghouses-where-city-was-born/Hpstvjt0kj52ZMpjUOM5RJ/story.html|title=Boardinghouses: Where the City was Born|last=Graham|first=Ruth|date=13 January 2013|work=The Boston Globe|access-date=2018-04-20}}</ref> In Boston, in the 1830s, when landlords and their boarders were added up, between one third and one half of the city's entire population lived in a boarding house.<ref name="Graham" /> 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.<ref name="Graham" /> Large houses were converted to boarding houses, as wealthy families moved to more fashionable neighborhoods.<ref name="Graham" /> The boarders in the 19th century ran the gamut as well, from well-off businessmen to poor laborers, and from single people to families.<ref name="Graham" /> In the 19th century, between a third to half of urban dwellers rented a room to boarders or were boarders themselves.<ref name="Hester">{{cite news |url=https://www.citylab.com/life/2016/02/brief-history-of-co-living-spaces/470115/ |title=A Brief History of Co-Living Spaces |last=Hester|first=Jessica Leigh |date= 22 February 2016|newspaper=Bloomberg |publisher=City Lab |access-date=10 November 2018 }}</ref> In New York in 1869, the cost of living in a boarding house ranged from $2.50 to $40 a week.<ref name="Graham" />{{efn|For comparison purposes, a laborer in the construction trades in New York usually earned $1.00 to $1.50 per day around that time.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Wholesale prices, wages, and transportation. Report by Mr. Aldrich, from the Committee on Finance, March 3, 1893|series=52d Cong., 2d sess. Senate. Rept. 1394 |date=1893|publisher=Washington|pages=449|hdl = 2027/uc1.c061422449}}</ref>}} Some boarding houses attracted people with particular occupations or preferences, such as vegetarian meals.<ref name="Graham" />

The boarding house reinforced some social changes: it made it feasible for people to move to a large city and away from their families.<ref name="Graham" /> The distance from relatives brought social anxieties and complaints that the residents of boarding houses were not respectable.<ref name="Graham" /> Boarding out gave people the opportunity to meet other residents and so they promoted some social mixing.<ref name="Graham" /> That had advantages, such as learning new ideas and new people's stories, and also disadvantages, such as occasionally meeting disreputable or dangerous people. Most boarders were men, but women found that they had limited options: a co-ed boarding house might mean meeting objectionable men, but an all-female boarding house might be or at least be suspected of being a [[brothel]].<ref name="Graham" />

Boarding houses attracted criticism: in "1916, Walter Krumwilde, a Protestant minister, saw the rooming house or boardinghouse system [as] "spreading its web like a spider, stretching out its arms like an octopus to catch the unwary soul."<ref name="ark.cdlib.org"/> Attempts to reduce boarding house availability had a gendered impact, as boarding houses were typically operated or managed by women "matrons," and closing boarding houses reduced that opportunity for women to make a living from operating such houses.<ref>Groth, Paul. ''Living Downtown: The History of Residential Hotels in the United States''. Chapter Eight – From Scattered Opinion to Centralized Policy. Berkeley:  University of California Press, 1994. http://ark.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/ft6j49p0wf/</ref>

Later, groups such as the [[Young Women's Christian Association]] provided heavily-supervised boarding houses for young women.<ref name="Graham" /> Boarding houses were viewed as "brick-and-mortar [[chastity belts]]" for young unmarried women, which protected them from the vices in the city.<ref name="Hester"/> 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.<ref name="Hester"/> Married women who boarded with their families in boarding houses were accused of being too lazy to do all of the washing, cooking, and cleaning necessary to keep house or to raise children properly.<ref name="Graham" /> While there is an association between boarding houses and women renters, men also rented, notably the poet-authors [[Walt Whitman]] and [[Edgar Allan Poe]].<ref name="Hester"/>

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.<ref name="ark.cdlib.org"/> By the early 1930s, urban reformers were typically using codes and zoning to enforce "uniform and protected single-use residential district[s] of private houses," the reformers' preferred housing type.<ref name="ark.cdlib.org"/> 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."<ref name="ark.cdlib.org"/> As a result, boarding houses became less common in the early 20th century. Another factor that reduced boarding house numbers was that improved [[mass transit]] options made it feasible for more city residents to live in the suburbs and work in the city.<ref name="Graham" />

By the 1930s, boarding houses were becoming less common in most of the United States.<ref name="Graham" /> 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."<ref name="auto">{{cite web |url=http://www.urbancenter.utoronto.ca/pdfs/curp/1994_HistoryofRoomingHousesinToronto_Campsie.pdf |title=A Brief History of Rooming Houses in Toronto, 1972–94 |last=Campsie |first=Philippa |date=1994 |website=www.urbancenter.utoronto.ca |publisher=Rupert Community Residential Services |access-date=10 November 2018 |archive-date=9 October 2022 |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20221009/http://www.urbancenter.utoronto.ca/pdfs/curp/1994_HistoryofRoomingHousesinToronto_Campsie.pdf |url-status=dead }}</ref> However, with the housing boom in the 1950s, middle-class newcomers could increasingly afford their own homes or apartments, which meant that rooming and boarding houses were beginning to be used more often by postsecondary "students, the working poor, or the unemployed."<ref name="auto"/> By the 1960s, rooming and boarding houses were deteriorating, as official city policies tended to ignore them.