An affordable apartment in New York — can it be true?

From Houzz (see, I told you to subscribe) comes the story of what New York City is doing to create affordable living.

New York’s problem was not the same as Vancouver’s.  On the surface it’s just too few places to live.  But New York needs more spaces for singles and couples, not necessarily families.

In July 2012 New York City’s Department of Housing Preservation and Developmentlaunched an adAPT NYC competition to develop a building with microunits on a city-owned lot in Manhattan’s Kips Bay neighborhood. The competition was spurred by the changing demographics of the city, which now has 1.8 million one- and two-person households (comprising more than 20 percent of its 8.4 million residents) but only 1 million one-bedroom and studio apartments. Furthermore, the current zoning code restricts the size of apartments and their density (number of units per lot), making it impossible to build small units for singles and couples.

Today, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg announced the winner of the competition at the launch of the Museum of the City of New York’s Making Room exhibition, which also explores small apartments in the city through design. A team made up of Monadnock Development, the Actors Fund Housing Development Corporation and nArchitects won with their My Micro NY entry. Here are details of the winning design.

Sizes start at 250 square feet, with an innovative design that makes it seem like much more.