Dorms have RAs, security officers, cleaning staff, food courts, university police, and a wrap of social services that can nudge a person slipping back into line, or send them packing quickly. Landlords, rightly, shouldn't be able to send people packing with little to no notice. Without the security, social services, and cleaning staff I expect any project of the same scale as a large University to catastrophically fail due to public outcry regarding the inevitable decay of living conditions.

The unfortunate reality is that mentally ill people that don't know how to take care of themselves are expensive. Think cleaning feces off of every imaginable surface, thousand room bed bug outbreaks, all the awful diseases that occur in unkempt showers or locker rooms. How will we keep so many people in confined quarters happy and busy enough to not cause massive problems?

I fully support measures to take care of every living being on earth, but let's not make perfectly avoidable mistakes in the process.

> The unfortunate reality is that mentally ill people that don't know how to take care of themselves are expensive.

When did I ever mention housing for the mentally ill?

What I'm saying is I think consenting, functional adults should have the option of living in a dorm-style setting if they so choose.

For one, it's a great way to build community.

For two, it should be a significantly cheaper way to live, which would probably appeal mainly to the poor, but would also appeal to the same set of people that already live with multiple roommates to reduce costs.

Apartment complexes already have on-premise maintenance staff. There is no reason to expect that a dorm-style building couldn't also be staffed appropriately.

I always thought there was a market for "semi-assisted living for non-disabled/non-seniors". If they put a cafeteria (maybe make the bottom floors of the building an open-to-the-public food court) and a centralized laundry service in a large apartment building, it changes the product offering dramatically.

You can monetize the service offering-- I could see charging a few hundred dollars more per month for an apartment that included a meal and laundry service plan. (obviously, some tweaks and fiddling would be necessary, but there's a lot of precedent on the math from college dorm plans out there)

The design of the buildings can be economized: instead of having to give up significant square footage for full kitchens, big pantries, and laundry rooms in most/every unit, you can provide a kitchenette and more livable square footage. You can likely cut out some of the high-amperage circuits necessary for cookers and dryers, and some plumbing for laundry rooms. I wonder if it would be viable to consider as an endgame if remote work hangs around after Covid and we end up with a glut of office-tower capacity, although I suspect the cost to retrofit in enough bathrooms/showers would vastly outweigh the cost of dropping in a dishwasher and stove into each unit.

Maintenance costs likely go down, as you don't have need to install or maintain dishwashers, ovens, in-sink food disposal units, and any sort of plumbing or electrical problems they cause. You have fewer noise, weird smell, and small-fire related complaints.

There's clearly a marketable business around "I'm waaaaay too busy doing Important Business Stuff/Living My Extreme Life/Some Other Self-Aggrandizing Fantasy to worry about the nuts and bolts of living" (See products like Soylent and Huel for people who find preparing food and eating a challenge) and this is just another step on the continuum.

Worth noting I think that we also do this kind of housing for people transitioning from prison back to normal life -- "halfway houses".

About 20% of the population is living with a mental illness. [1]

Your casual use of "consenting functional adults" is overly simplistic. It is a fact that desperate people make desperate decisions. If you're only allowing such people then we should set an income floor so the poor cannot be preyed upon. Say, the true cost of living in the city? Anyone making less is not in a fair position to consent to such living conditions.

>Apartment complexes already have on-premise maintenance staff. There is no reason to expect that a dorm-style building couldn't also be staffed appropriately.

Hah. Maybe the ones you live in. Can't tell you how many apartments I've lived or been in that had mold, roaches, faulty wiring, dangerous appliances, and the like that went without repair despite repeated complaints over months and years.

So while in theory it's not a bad idea. In practice, because of the same societal problems that make this a serious consideration, projects like this are doomed to fail without massive community support and budgets that would probably rival just giving each tenant a custom ordered bare minimum trailer in a park packed like sardines.

1. https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics/mental-illness.sh...

>The unfortunate reality is that mentally ill people that don't know how to take care of themselves are expensive. Think cleaning feces off of every imaginable surface, thousand room bed bug outbreaks, all the awful diseases that occur in unkempt showers or locker rooms. How will we keep so many people in confined quarters happy and busy enough to not cause massive problems?

Removal of high-density housing isn't solving that problem, it's just forcing those people into more desperate circumstances.

Who's removing high density housing? I thought we were talking about building dorms? 4 people to a room on bunks with a minifridge and a microwave. Communal bathrooms, showers, and a couple large kitchens per thousand head.

Either you pay for it in full by having them in jail or on the street, or you pay (less) for it by addressing those issues. There is no way to avoid the costs of the fact that we need to help everyone in society.

We pay even less when we have programs that catch the people falling through the cracks as soonas they start slipping...

Boarding houses used to be fairly common, I'm not sure if this kind of regulation or something else drove them out of common use. The idea of not having to deal with cooking or meals out every night has a fair amount of appeal by itself.

Zoning and technology both had a role to play in their demise. Zoning reduced their scope, technology made living outside the city while working more possible and reduced the need.

WeLive apartments are basically dorms for adults. A coworker lived in one for a few months while they got their bearings in NYC. For a slightly inflated rent you a fully furnished apartment with a bunch of people in the same situation as you - instant new network of friends and connections to get you started in a new place.

And we are seeing massive outbreaks of COVID-19 on college campuses now that some are reopening, these laws were first put in place for related reasons...

> And we are seeing massive outbreaks of COVID-19 on college campuses now that some are reopening

Honestly, great. Let the young catch it to act as firebreaks for the more vulnerable.

If you are going to college in person right now, you have already judged the risks and deemed them acceptable.

The thing I think is ridiculous is the number of universities shutting down completely at the first whiff of an outbreak.

What did they think would happen? Have the backbone to let it burn through.