Flophouse

A flophouse (US English), doss-house or dosshouse (British English) is a place that offers very cheap lodging, generally by providing only minimal services.[1]

Contents

Characteristics

Occupants of flophouses generally share bathroom facilities and reside in very tight quarters. The people who make use of these places are often transients. By the early 21st century, the typical cost might approach US$9 per night. Quarters in flophouses are typically very small, and may resemble office cubicles more than a regular room in a hotel or apartment building.[2]

In the past, flophouses were sometimes called "workingmen's hotels" and catered to hobos and transient workers such as seasonal railroad and agriculture workers, or migrant lumberjacks who would travel west during the summer to work and then return to an eastern or midwestern city such as Chicago to stay in a flophouse during the winter. This is described in the 1930 novel The Rambling Kid by Charles Ashleigh and the 1976 book The Human Cougar by Lloyd Morain. Another theme in Morain's book is the gentrification which was then beginning and which has led cities to pressure flophouses to close.

Some city districts that currently have or once had flophouses in abundance became well-known in their own right, such as the Bowery in Manhattan, New York City. As of 2006, building prices and value in the Bowery have significantly increased, and this combined with increased gentrification in the area seriously threatens the ability of flophouses and inexpensive boarding-style hotels to remain open.[3][4]

In popular culture

See also

References

Notes
  1. ^ The Last of the Mohicans—Searching for a place to flop on what was once skid row
  2. ^ N.Y. Court says flophouses fall under rent stabilization laws
  3. ^ From flophouses to fancy on the Bowery from The Real Deal Magazine
  4. ^ The Big City; Save the Flophouses