SIC 7021
ROOMING AND BOARDING HOUSES



This category covers establishments primarily engaged in renting rooms, with or without board, on a fee basis. Rental of apartments, apartment hotels, and other housing units are classified in Real Estate Operators (Except Developers) and Lessors industries. Rooming and boarding houses operated by membership organizations for their members only are classified in SIC 7041: Organization Hotels and Lodging Houses, on Membership Basis. Homes for the aged, children, and the handicapped that also provide additional services, other than nursing care, are classified in SIC 8361: Residential Care, and homes that provide nursing care are classified in Nursing and Personal Care Facilities industries.

NAICS Code(s)

721310 (Rooming and Boarding Houses)

Industry Snapshot

Rooming and boarding houses provide generally low-cost lodging on either a temporary or long-term basis. Although the distinction between rooming, boarding, and lodging houses is not always clear, a rooming house is typically an establishment that provides only for the rental of rooms, while a boarding house provides meals and may offer such amenities as maid service and laundry service. At one time, rooming and boarding houses were a common, and often desirable, form of housing that catered to members of a wide range of social classes and professional occupations, but this sector of the lodging industry has generally been in decline. A 1985 Engineering News-Record report on a housing alternatives symposium characterized rooming and boarding houses as "bygone housing styles." Commercial rooming and boarding house establishments, while not "bygone," have undeniably become associated with the less fortunate classes. Nonetheless, rooming and boarding houses play an important role within the lodging industry and, as New Jersey architect Michael Mostoller argued in the course of the Engineering News-Record symposium, "the boarding house and rooming house … must be reconsidered" as an economical and potentially convivial form of commercial congregate housing.

Organization and Structure

The rooming and boarding house sector of the lodging industry includes non-organizational rooming houses, lodging houses, boarding houses, and dormitories that do not provide for such special services as nursing or personal care. Rooming and boarding houses can offer single rooms, shared double rooms, efficiencies, or suites; private, shared, or communal living and eating areas; and private, shared, or communal bathrooms. Approximately two-thirds of commercial rooming and boarding house establishments are owned by sole proprietors or partnerships, rather than by corporations. Most rooming and boarding houses are relatively small-scale operations. The average establishment had only five employees and an annual revenue of only $181,849.

Rooming and boarding house establishments are subject to Department of Housing and Urban Development, Federal Housing Administration, and other federal or local building codes and standards, which effectively limit design options for new establishments, plus state and/or local licensing and inspection. A related concern for rooming and boarding house owners is insurance, which can be difficult to obtain for multi-family dwellings.

Background and Development

In a study published in the Journal of Marriage and the Family, John Modell and Tamara K. Hareven assessed the nineteenth century heyday of lodging in both domestic and commercial establishments, noting that "these two categories (from the point of view of the lodger) essentially competed within a single market." Modell and Hareven found that the nineteenth century prevalence of rooming and boarding can be associated with rapid industrialization, urbanization, and population growth, coupled with increases in the number of manufacturing employees, of young, unmarried working men and women in the cities, and of foreign-born urban residents — though the authors stressed that lodging was far more characteristic of American and migrant cultures than of foreign cultures, who generally turned to lodging only as an expedient. Modell and Hareven proposed that "in an industrializing, rapidly urbanizing society," rooming and boarding "was so widespread as to be reasonably considered indispensable."

Mark Peel, in an article published in the Winter 1992 Journal of American History, focused on the lodging house in Boston in the second half of the nineteenth century. Peel elaborated on the cultural distinctions between the often genteel boarding house and the generally working-or lower-class rooming house, which was less socially structured and less supervised by landlords or hosts. Peel concluded that the rooming house "was not just a place where thousands of migrants and immigrants first met the American city," but a potentially radical housing alternative where "some urban dwellers explored a very different social trajectory from those who entered through the boardinghouse, the tenement, or the suburban home."

Commercial rooming and boarding house establishments could readily adapt to such variant and shifting "social trajectories." Lisa F. Fine, in a study published in the Journal of Social History, described five particular boarding houses in Chicago that catered to women. These boarding houses, in the first three decades of the twentieth century, "provided safe, respectable, home-like, low cost housing, and a vast array of social services that allowed white-collar women to lead relatively independent lives." In 1915, among the residents of these boarding houses, 233 were classified as stenographers, clerks, bookkeepers, or secretaries; 132 were listed as students; and 32 were teachers.

During the course of the twentieth century, however, the rooming and boarding house sector of the lodging industry has gradually been eroded. In an article published in the Winter 1992 Journal of Social History, Richard Harris summarized the scholarly consensus on the factors that led to the "social marginalization of lodging." By the late nineteenth century, increasing levels of prosperity, along with essentially middle-class concerns about a lack of space and privacy in congregate housing, gradually made boarding or lodging in private residences less common, although it persisted as a source of supplemental household income well into the twentieth century. As the economic tie between homeowners and lodgers was broken, and single-family housing became entrenched as a cultural ideal, lodging became less respectable. This led to the decline of boarding arrangements for the economically prosperous, whether in domestic or commercial establishments. Inexpensive rooming houses, with lodgers eating, socializing, and securing such services as laundry outside of the rooming establishments, became the predominant form of lodging house. Beginning in the 1920s, a boom in urban housing construction and the proliferation of inexpensive apartment blocs undermined the already narrowed market for rooming houses. In addition, beginning in the 1930s, the gradual establishment of the welfare state further lessened some of the economic bases of the rooming and boarding house sector of the lodging industry.

By the second half of the twentieth century, commercial rooming and boarding house establishments had become associated with housing for new workers or for the transient, poor, aged, or disabled. Of particular note was a 1977 incident in Sea Bright, New Jersey, in which four mentally retarded boarding house lodgers were killed in a fire that may have been set off by hostile neighbors. This incident created a national scandal and triggered congressional initiatives for the licensing and regulation of rooming and boarding house establishments.

The above developments contributed to a steady drop in the number and profitability of these establishments through the 1990s. Nonetheless, rooming and boarding houses have proven their flexibility in the past. Still, the fate of this segment of the lodging industry remains subject to fluctuations in cultural, political, economic, demographic, and regional factors.

Current Conditions

The total number of commercial rooming and boarding houses nationwide was 1,620, down from 1,781 in 1987. The states with the highest number of rooming and boarding house establishments continued to be large states with high numbers of transient residents, such as California (280 establishments), New York (175 establishments), Florida (83 establishments), and Pennsylvania (79 establishments). Many states (Alaska, Arkansas, Delaware, Hawaii, Idaho, Kentucky, Louisiana, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Dakota, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Utah, West Virginia, and Wyoming) had 10 or fewer commercial rooming and boarding house establishments.

The national revenues for the rooming and boarding house sector of the lodging industry amounted to approximately $294.6 million. This figure represented an increase of 19.6 percent over 1987, but it was far less than the average 56 percent increase in revenues during that period for taxable service industries in general.

During the 1990s, the industry experienced negative publicity that focused on initiatives for the inspection, regulation, and reform of substandard or illegal rooming establishments. The New York Times reported on the "growing number of one-family homes illegally converted to single-room occupancy." In such cities as Chicago, neighborhood associations were organized to combat illegal conversions in areas zoned for one-family or two-family homes. These neighborhood associations protested the loss of neighborhood integrity and the decline of property values. They also feared — both for themselves and for the occupants of illegal rooming houses—problems related to congestion, security, fire, pollution, sanitation, and noise. Further, some establishments also became centers of drug activity, as allegedly happened in the case of Peck's Row, a historic row house in Milwaukee that had been converted into a rooming house and became the subject of controversy over its preservation.

As in the past, many illegal rooming establishments are inhabited by recently immigrated populations, whose vulnerability to exploitation may be aggravated by a lack of language and cultural skills and/or by illegal immigration status. The New York Times article quoted Bill Apgar of the Harvard University Joint Center for Housing Studies on this specific problem: "There are a lot of illegal conversions where … people are being allowed to live in unsafe conditions while paying rent which is disproportionate to the service they receive…. The fear of being deported is the leverage that the landlord holds over the tenant." Even so, city inspectors are often reluctant to take action against illegal rooming establishments. The landlords may be subject to only limited and temporary penalties that provide little deterrent, while the socially and economically disadvantaged tenants might suffer greatly from attempts at governmental intervention or control. Some municipalities have taken a more positive approach to this problem by considering conversion of rooming houses into low-and moderate-income housing units.

Despite this generally gloomy outlook, the industry does offer some positive aspects. Located in New York City, the Katherine House, one of the last surviving traditional boarding houses for women, has a waiting list of 18-to 25-year-old women who wish to obtain a private room with two daily meals for a mere $135 per week. A hybrid form of housing, "extended-stay lodging," provides hotel-like accommodations for traveling businesspeople for periods of weeks or months, sometimes with meals included, and became increasingly popular in the mid 1990s.

Workforce

The rooming and boarding house sector of the lodging industry created only a limited number of employment opportunities. Rooming and boarding house employees included janitorial and housekeeping staff and food service, laundry, and maintenance workers. The total number of people employed in the industry was approximately 8,000, with an average of five employees per establishment.

Further Reading

"1997 Industry Quick Reports." Washington, D.C.: U.S. Census Bureau, 26 November 1999. Available from http://factfinder.census.gov .

Gould, Whitney. "Bid for Historic Status on Hold." Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 18 March 1997.

Modell, John, and Tamara K. Hareven. "Urbanization and the Malleable Household: An Examination of Boarding and Lodging in American Families." Journal of Marriage and the Family, August 1973.

Murphy, Shelby L. "Austin Becoming Hotbed for Extended-Stay Lodging." Austin Business Journal, 24 January 1997.

O'Brien, Miles, Joie Chen, and Janine Sharell. "Katherine House Provides Young Women Affordable Housing." CNN Saturday Morning News Transcript, 22 February 1997.

Tabachnik, Sheri. "Hotel Conversion Would Fill Avon Housing Mandate." Asbury Park Press, 29 January 1997.



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