I have a genetic disorder that was not diagnosed until my mid thirties. Living with people I nearly know who are not invested in keeping me healthy would be disastrous for me. I never wanted roommates ever. In my twenties, prior to my diagnosis, I could not have proven that I had special need of retaining a high degree of control over my environment.

My opinion is that rich and privileged people get to routinely exercise their preferences and predilections without having to justify them. Everyone else needs to jump through hoops and fill out paperwork and prove to some authority that their preferences are a valid need. I think we could do away with a lot of expensive programs designed to accommodate special needs if we started from a baseline assumption that you should be allowed to get your preferences so long as they aren't hurting anyone else.

Most of the design of our world is extremely accommodating of the privileged few. Everyone else is default shat upon. I would like to live in a better world than that.

> Living with people I nearly know who are not invested in keeping me healthy would be disastrous for me

Would it have been better if your roommates shared the same (or similar, from a compassionate perspective) disorder? I have a friend who suffers from migraines. She found having similarly-afflicted roommates to be tremendously comforting and, in one case, potentially life saving.

No. In my case, that is a recipe for disaster. I have a form of cystic fibrosis. It involves a compromised immune system and predisposition to develop deadly antibiotic resistant infections. People who have CF and want to attend related medical conferences are often asked to show they do not test positive for certain infections that are not a big problem for the general population but can be a serious problem for people with CF.

Furthermore, you are ignoring my point that I did not have a diagnosis until shortly before my 36th birthday. Even without a diagnosis, I was well aware that my health was delicate, though other people viewed me as a hypochondriac and neurotic.

My argument is that people should be able to find a small cheap place they can afford to live in on their own if they strongly prefer living alone. They should not need to justify such a preference. A desire to have your own place and willingness to accept something small and bare bones should not make you a freak that society cannot accommodate. It was a completely normal arrangement in this country for quite a long time. Then we tore down most of our SROs and such accommodations these days are no longer a normal living arrangement for a young person just starting out. They are a program for hardcore junkies who would otherwise be chronically homeless and they have a terrible public image.

But if you watch old movies, or movies set in a previous era, just having a room with a sink and hot plate was completely normal for ordinary people. You see this in movies like A walk in the clouds. It was not Section 8 housing. It was not The Projects. It was a market rate rental commonly available.

There is no reason we can't bring that back.