Are bedsits a thing of the past?

drbluebox

When I first left home in 2001 I lived in a few bedsits until got first flat in 2006, since then had a few student house shares but never seen any bedsits available.

Bedsits for me seem to be the best option but seem to be non existant anymore, places that used to do bedsits are now student accomodation (seems to be a growing trend as they charge about double or more what they would get normally)

Is there a reason for this outside of landlords letting to students more?

G_M

Now HMOs.

House of Multiple Occupation.

hazyjo

They just tend to be HMOs now (house in multiple occupation). Pretty sure it's much of a muchness.

Jx

pickledonionspaceraider

Yes they are still an option in my town, a friend of mine lives in one,

ognum

Aren't they called studio apartments now!

moneyistooshorttomention

I would define studio apartment as being self-contained.

I remember having to live in bedsits donkeys years ago - and what I had was one room and I shared the bathroom/s and one house had a shared garden (that none of us bothered with basically).

I thought HMO's were where people rented a bedroom each and shared ALL communal facilities (ie kitchen and sitting room)? Which I would call "house-sharing", rather than "renting a bedsit".

In bedsits one doesnt need to have anything to do with anyone else living in the house - because you do only share the bathroom/s basically. In the event - in both houses of bedsits I lived in I became friends with a couple of the other people living there - but that was choice (not necessity) iyswim.

tacpot12

I thought the old concept of a beds it included a basic cooking facilities, e.g. a one ring gas job. If correct, I expect few HMOs provide this now due to safety concerns.

moneyistooshorttomention

tacpot12 wrote: »

I thought the old concept of a beds it included a basic cooking facilities, e.g. a one ring gas job. If correct, I expect few HMOs provide this now due to safety concerns.

Yep...both bedsits I rented had that.

Bedsit no. 1 had a grotty little baby cooker, a 1950s freestanding kitchen unit, a 1950s fold-down kitchen table and a washbasin that was meant to double up as kitchen sink.

Bedsit no. 2 had got a section of my room partitioned-around and a grotty bodged-together sort of table, a grotty baby cooker, a few built-in shelves, a little wall water-heater, a sink unit that had to double up as personal washbasin.

Looking back - my mind boggles that people had to live in places like that. Complete with dodgy wiring/no central heating/no phone/no fridge and generally very grotty all round. But - in my case - my home city is expensive to live in and so many of us had to rent those bedsits (rather than the one bedroom flat we had decided to rent).

I remember the famous "Cooking in a bedsit" cookbook that was so popular in that era and was written specifically for people having to live in those circumstances. I had a copy of it myself.

AdrianC

tacpot12 wrote: »

I thought the old concept of a beds it included a basic cooking facilities, e.g. a one ring gas job. If correct, I expect few HMOs provide this now due to safety concerns.

In which respect, they were more like a studio flat - except a studio would have a dedicated bathroom, while a bedsit would have shared.

Since people didn't really have the same standards of personal hygiene back then, that was less of an issue.

So the old "bedsit" is somewhere half-way between a modern studio and a modern room in a shared house/HMO.

moneyistooshorttomention

AdrianC wrote: »

Since people didn't really have the same standards of personal hygiene back then, that was less of an issue.

.

Don't know whether that might have been true of some people?

I was brought up in the 1950s - ie the era of weekly bath and weekly "shampoo and set". But my bedsit days were in the 1970s and certainly a part of the population had "moved on" from that by then. Dont know how big a part of the population had "moved on" - but I was certainly one of them personally and my decision was in place to have a daily shower and hairwash then. As far as I can recall - I had made that decision in the 1960s - as I was a teenager still living with parents then and I recall feeling stymied by the fact they wouldnt let me have a daily bath (as they were still doing "weekly baths" themselves).

It just wasnt physically possible to do so at the 1970s for many because of the lack of facilities. We had to share the bathroom/s and they had no heating of any description in them and no shower. So - that ended up in me personally coping as best I could with the inadequate facilities by having a bath 2 or 3 times a week and washing my hair in the sink daily as best I could.

Moving to a public sector flat was a huge relief in the late 1970s - as I had a bathroom to myself (still a bath - but no shower). So I promptly started having daily bath and hairwash. A relief again in the 1980s to buy my first house and one of the first things I did was put in a reasonable shower and start having that daily shower/hairwash at last (I would say about 15 years after I had decided to do so??).

So - certainly some of us had normal modern-day standards of hygiene by the 1970s and felt very frustrated by their not being adequate facilities to act accordingly. I dont know if we were the forerunners and there were still many people in that era who hadnt even made the decision in principle to have a daily shower?? Possible I guess - as I'm a "second adopter" of things normally (not first in line inventor - but in there having decided on whatever-it-is before most people have I think??).

AdrianC

It was only when I left home to go to uni, in the late 80s, that I realised that "weekly bath, whether you need it or not" might not be quite as universal as I assumed.

A shower? Nah, no point - all they do is dribble out of the wall in your general direction, right?

Even then, the halls I lived in just had cubicles with baths in, next to the cubicles with sinks in, next to the cubicles with toilets in, down the end of the corridor - the baths quickly gained those rubber plug-on-the-taps showers, bought by various of the student residents.