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Speaker 1: show notes. Welcome to the I Can't Sleep Podcast or
Speaker 1: I Hope you drift off one fact at a time.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Benjamin Boster, and today's episode is about apartments.
Speaker 1: Thank you to Michael for sponsoring today's episode. This one
Speaker 1: goes out to Maya, Who's a good Egg? An apartment
Speaker 1: North American English, flat, British English, Indian English, South African English,
Speaker 1: or unit Australian English is a self contained housing unit
Speaker 1: that occupies part of a building. The housing tenure of
Speaker 1: apartments also varies considerably from large scale public housing to
Speaker 1: owner occupancy within what is legally a condominium strata title
Speaker 1: or common hold or leasehold to tenants running from a
Speaker 1: private landlord. The buildings that contain apartments may be called
Speaker 1: different things depending on size or country. The term apartment
Speaker 1: is favored in North America, although in some Canadian cities
Speaker 1: flat is used for a unit which is part of
Speaker 1: a house containing two or three units, typically one to
Speaker 1: a floor. In the UK and Australia, flat is the
Speaker 1: common term, although parts of the real estate industry has
Speaker 1: recently begun using the term apartment for large upmarket flats,
Speaker 1: especially if their target group is foreign investors. In some countries,
Speaker 1: the word unit is a more general term, referring to
Speaker 1: both apartments and rental business suites. The word unit is
Speaker 1: generally used only in the context of a specific building.
Speaker 1: Mixed use buildings combine commercial and residential uses was in
Speaker 1: the same structure. Typically, mixed use buildings consist of businesses
Speaker 1: on the lower floors, often retail and street facing ground
Speaker 1: floor and supporting subterranean levels, and residential apartments on the
Speaker 1: upper floors. Tenement law refers to the feudal bases of
Speaker 1: permanent property, such as land or rents. It may be
Speaker 1: found combined as in message or tenement to encompass all
Speaker 1: the land, buildings, and other assets of a property in
Speaker 1: the United States. In some other countries, such as Canada,
Speaker 1: some apartment dwellers own their units either as a housing cooperative,
Speaker 1: in which the residence own shares of a corporation that
Speaker 1: owns a building or development, or in a condominium whose
Speaker 1: residents own their apartments and share ownership of the public spaces.
Speaker 1: Most apartments are in buildings designed for the purpose, but large,
Speaker 1: older houses are sometimes divided into apartments. The word apartment
Speaker 1: denotes a residential unit or section in a building. In
Speaker 1: some locations, particularly the United States, the word connotes a
Speaker 1: rental unit owned by the building owner and is not
Speaker 1: typically used for a condominium. In England and Wales, some
Speaker 1: flat owners own shares in the company that owns the
Speaker 1: freehold of the building, as well as holding the flat
Speaker 1: under a lease. This arrangement is commonly known as a
Speaker 1: share of freehold flat. The freehold company has the right
Speaker 1: to collect annual ground rents from each of the flat
Speaker 1: owners in the building. The freeholder can also develop or
Speaker 1: sell the building, subject to the usual planning and restrictions
Speaker 1: that might apply. This situation does not happen in Scotland,
Speaker 1: where long leasehold of residential property was previously unusual and
Speaker 1: is now impossible. Apartment buildings are multi story buildings where
Speaker 1: three or more residences are contained within one structure. Such
Speaker 1: a building may be called an apartment building, apartment complex,
Speaker 1: flat complex, block of flats, tenement Scotland, tower block, high rise,
Speaker 1: or occasionally mansion block. In British English, especially if it
Speaker 1: consists of many apartments for rent, a high rise apartment
Speaker 1: building is commonly referred to as a residential tower, apartment tower,
Speaker 1: or block of flats. In Australia, a high rise building
Speaker 1: is defined by its hide differently in various jurisdictions. It
Speaker 1: may be only residential, in which case it might also
Speaker 1: be called a tower block, or it might include other
Speaker 1: functions such as hotels, offices or shops. There is no
Speaker 1: clear difference between a tower block and a skyscraper, although
Speaker 1: a building with fifty or more stories is generally considered
Speaker 1: a skyscraper. High Rise buildings become possible with the invention
Speaker 1: of the elevator or lyft and cheaper, more abundant building materials.
Speaker 1: Their structural system usually is made of reinforced concrete and steel.
Speaker 1: A low rise building and mid rise buildings have fewer stories,
Speaker 1: but the limits are not always clear. Empress defines a
Speaker 1: low rise as an enclosed structure below thirty five meters,
Speaker 1: which is divided into regular floor levels. The City of
Speaker 1: Toronto defines a mid rise as a building between four
Speaker 1: and twelve stories. Most low rise apartment buildings or walk
Speaker 1: ups lacking elevators. Garden apartment buildings are usually one or
Speaker 1: two story structures, where the individual apartments open directly to
Speaker 1: the outdoors, and where the building or complex offers landscaped grounds.
Speaker 1: The smallest self contained apartments are referred to as studio
Speaker 1: efficiency or bachelor apartments in the U S and Canada,
Speaker 1: or studio flat in the UK. These units usually consist
Speaker 1: of a large single main room which acts as the
Speaker 1: living room, dining room, and bedroom combined, and usually also
Speaker 1: includes kitchen facilities with a separate bathroom. In Korea, the
Speaker 1: term one room refers to a studio apartment. A bed
Speaker 1: sit is a UK variant on single room accommodation, a
Speaker 1: bed sitting room, probably without cooking facilities, with a shared bathroom.
Speaker 1: A bed sit is not self contained, and so is
Speaker 1: not an apartment or flat. As this article uses the terms,
Speaker 1: it forms part of what the UK government calls a
Speaker 1: house in multiple occupation. The American variant of the bedstead
Speaker 1: is the single room occupancy. Merriam Webster defines a garden
Speaker 1: apartment in American English as a multiple unit, low rise
Speaker 1: dwelling having considerable lawn or garden space. The apartment buildings
Speaker 1: are often arranged around courtyards that are open at one end.
Speaker 1: Such a garden apartment shares some characteristics of a town house.
Speaker 1: Each apartment has its own building entrance, or shares that
Speaker 1: entrance by a staircase and lobby that adjoins other units
Speaker 1: immediately above and or below it. Unlike a town house,
Speaker 1: each apartment occupies only one level. Such garden apartment buildings
Speaker 1: are almost never more than three stories high, since they
Speaker 1: typically lack elevators. However, the first garden apartment buildings in
Speaker 1: New York, US, built in the early nineteen hundreds, were
Speaker 1: constructed five stories high. Some garden apartment buildings place a
Speaker 1: one car garage under each apartment. The interior grounds are
Speaker 1: often landscaped. In Chicago, a garden apartment refers to abasement
Speaker 1: apartment the Oxford English Dictionary defines the use of garden
Speaker 1: flat and British English as a basement or ground floor
Speaker 1: flat with a view of and access to a garden
Speaker 1: or lawn, although although its citations acknowledge that the reference
Speaker 1: to a garden may be illusory, garden flat can serve
Speaker 1: simply as a euphemism for a basement. The large Georgian
Speaker 1: or Victorian town house was built with an excavated subterranean
Speaker 1: space around its front, known as an area, often surrounded
Speaker 1: by cast iron railings. This lowest floor housed the kitchen,
Speaker 1: the main place of work for the servants, with a
Speaker 1: tradesman's entrance by the area stairs. This lower ground floor,
Speaker 1: another euphemism, has proven ideal for conversion to a self
Speaker 1: contained garden flat. One American term for this arrangemond, is
Speaker 1: an English basement. When part of a house is converted
Speaker 1: for the ostensible use of the owner's family member, the
Speaker 1: self contained dwelling may be known as an in law apartment,
Speaker 1: annex or granny flat, though these sometimes illegally created units
Speaker 1: are often occupied by ordinary renters rather than the landlord's relative.
Speaker 1: In Canada, these are commonly located below the main house
Speaker 1: and are therefore basement suites. Another term is an accessory
Speaker 1: dwelling unit which may be part of the main house
Speaker 1: or a free standing structure in its grounds. Salon apartment
Speaker 1: is a term linked to the exclusive apartments built as
Speaker 1: part of multi family houses in Belgrade and in certain
Speaker 1: towns in Yugoslavia in the first decades of the twentieth century.
Speaker 1: The structure of the apartments included centrally located ant room
Speaker 1: with a combined function of the dining room and one
Speaker 1: or more salon areas. Most of these apartments were built
Speaker 1: in Belgrade, Serbia, although with the first examples of apartments
Speaker 1: popularly named salon apartments, with the concept of spatial and
Speaker 1: functional organization later spreading to other large urban centers in Yugoslavia.
Speaker 1: Maisonette French for little house has no strict definition, but
Speaker 1: the oed suggests a part of a residential building which
Speaker 1: is occupied separately, usually on more than one floor, and
Speaker 1: having its own outside entrance. It differs from a flat
Speaker 1: in having usually more than one floor, with a staircase
Speaker 1: internal to the dwelling leading from the entrance floor to
Speaker 1: the upper or in some cases lower, other floor. It
Speaker 1: is a very common arrangement in much post War British housing,
Speaker 1: especially but not exclusively, public housing, and serves both to
Speaker 1: reduce costs by reducing the amount of space given to
Speaker 1: access corridors, and to emulate the traditional two story terraced
Speaker 1: house to which many of the residents had been accustomed.
Speaker 1: It also allows for apartments, even when they are acts
Speaker 1: dust by a corridor, to have windows on both sides
Speaker 1: of the building. A maisonet could encompass tineeside flats, pairs
Speaker 1: of single story flats within a two story terrace. Their
Speaker 1: distinctive feature is their use of two separate front doors
Speaker 1: onder the street, each door leading to a single flat.
Speaker 1: Maisonet could also stretch to cottage flats, also known as
Speaker 1: four in a block flats, a style of housing common
Speaker 1: in Scotland. The vast majority of apartments are on one level,
Speaker 1: hence flat. Some, however, have two stories joined internally by stairs,
Speaker 1: just like many houses. One term for this is maisonette.
Speaker 1: Some housing in the United Kingdom, both public and private,
Speaker 1: was designed as scissor section flats. On a grander level,
Speaker 1: penthouses may have more than one story to emphasize the
Speaker 1: idea of space and luxury. Two story units in a
Speaker 1: new construction, are sometimes referred to as townhouses in some countries,
Speaker 1: though not usually in Britain, duplex refers to two separate
Speaker 1: units horizontally adjacent was a common demising wall, or vertically
Speaker 1: adjacent with a floor ceiling assembly. Duplex description can be
Speaker 1: different depending on the part of the US, but generally
Speaker 1: has two to four dwellings with a door for each
Speaker 1: and usually two front doors close together but separate. Referred
Speaker 1: to as duplex, indicating the number of units, not the
Speaker 1: number of floors, as in some areas of the country,
Speaker 1: they are often only one story. Groups of more than
Speaker 1: two units have corresponding names triplex, et cetera. These buildings
Speaker 1: that have a third story are known as triplexes. In
Speaker 1: the United States, regional forms have developed. A Milwaukee, a
Speaker 1: Polish flat, or raised cottage is a small house that
Speaker 1: has been lifted up to accommodate a basement floor housing
Speaker 1: a separate apartment, then set down again, thus becoming a
Speaker 1: modest pair of dwellings. In the Sun Belt, boxy small
Speaker 1: apartment buildings called dingbats, often with car ports below, sprang
Speaker 1: up from the nineteen fifties. In the United Kingdom, the
Speaker 1: term duplex is usually applied to an apartment with two
Speaker 1: stories with an internal staircase, neither of which is located
Speaker 1: at ground level. Such homes are frequently found in low
Speaker 1: cost rental housing, in apartment blocks constructed by local authorities
Speaker 1: or above street level retail units, where they may be
Speaker 1: occupied by the occupier of the retail unit or rented
Speaker 1: out separately. Buildings containing two dwellings with a common vertical
Speaker 1: wall are known as semi detached, or colloquially semis. This
Speaker 1: form of construction is very common and built as such,
Speaker 1: rather than being a later conversion. This type of apartment
Speaker 1: developed in the US during the middle of the twentieth century.
Speaker 1: The term initially described a living space created within a
Speaker 1: former industrial building, usually nineteenth century. These large apartments found
Speaker 1: favor with artists and musicians wanting accommodation in large cities
Speaker 1: New York, for example, and are related to unused buildings
Speaker 1: in the decaying parts of such cities, being occupied illegally
Speaker 1: by people's squad. These loft apartments were usually located in
Speaker 1: former high rise warehouses and factories left vacant after town
Speaker 1: planning rules and economic conditions in the mid twentieth century changed.
Speaker 1: The resulting apartments created a new bohemian lifestyle and were
Speaker 1: arranged in a completely different way from most urban living spaces,
Speaker 1: often including workshops and art studio spaces. As the supply
Speaker 1: of old buildings of a suitable nature has dried up,
Speaker 1: developers have responded by constructing new buildings in the same esthetic,
Speaker 1: with varying degrees of success. An industrial warehouse or a
Speaker 1: commercial space converted to an apartment is only called a loft,
Speaker 1: although some modern lofts are built by design. A penthouse
Speaker 1: is an apartment usually located on the top floor of
Speaker 1: a high rise apartment building. This type of house has
Speaker 1: exclusive features like private elevators, landscape terraces, and high ceilings.
Speaker 1: In Russia, a communal apartment is a room with a
Speaker 1: shared kitchen and bath. A typical arrangement is a cluster
Speaker 1: of five or so room apartments with a common kitchen
Speaker 1: and bathroom and separate front doors occupying a floor. In
Speaker 1: a pre revolutionary mansion, Traditionally, a room is owned by
Speaker 1: the government and assigned to a family on a semi
Speaker 1: permanent basis. A service department is any size space for
Speaker 1: residential living that includes regular made and cleaning services provided
Speaker 1: by the rentell agent. Service departments or serviced flats developed
Speaker 1: in the early part of the twentieth century and were
Speaker 1: briefly fashionable in the nineteen twenties and thirties. They are
Speaker 1: intended to combine the best features of luxury and self
Speaker 1: contained apartments, often being an adjunct of a hotel. Like
Speaker 1: guests semi permanently installed in a luxury hotel, residents could
Speaker 1: enjoy the additional facilities such as housekeeping, laundry, catering, and
Speaker 1: other services if and when desired. A feature of these
Speaker 1: apartment blocks was quite glamorous interiors with lavish bathrooms but
Speaker 1: no kitchen or laundry spaces in each flat. This style
Speaker 1: of living became very fashionable as many upper class people
Speaker 1: found they could not afford as many live in staff
Speaker 1: after the First World War and reveled in a lock
Speaker 1: up and leave lifestyle that service department hotels supplied. Some
Speaker 1: buildings have been subsequently renovated with standard facilities in each apartment,
Speaker 1: but service department hotel complexes continued to be constructed. Recently,
Speaker 1: a number of hotels have supplemented their traditional business model
Speaker 1: with service department wings, creating privately owned areas within their buildings.
Speaker 1: Either freehold or leasehold. Apartments may be available for rent,
Speaker 1: furnished with furniture, or unfurnished into which a tenant moves
Speaker 1: in with his own furniture. Service departments intended to be
Speaker 1: convenient for shorter stays include soft furnishings and kitchen utensils
Speaker 1: and maid service. Laundry facilities may reside in a common
Speaker 1: area accessible to all building tenants, or each apartment may
Speaker 1: have its own facilities, depending on when the building was
Speaker 1: built and its design. Utilities such as water, heating, and
Speaker 1: electricity may be common for all the apartments, or separate
Speaker 1: for each apartment and build separately for each tenant. Many
Speaker 1: areas in the US have ruled it illegal to split
Speaker 1: a water bill among all the tenants, especially if a
Speaker 1: pool is on the premises. Outlets for connection to telephones
Speaker 1: are typically included in apartments. Telephone service is optional and
Speaker 1: is almost always billed separately from the rent payments. Cable
Speaker 1: television and similar amenities also cost. Extra parking spaces, air conditioning,
Speaker 1: and extra storage space may or may not be included
Speaker 1: with an apartment. Rental leases often limit the maximum number
Speaker 1: of residents in each apartment on or around the ground
Speaker 1: floor of the apartment building. A series of mailboxes are
Speaker 1: typically kept in a location accessible to the public and
Speaker 1: thus to the mail carrier. Every unit typically gets its
Speaker 1: own mailbox with individual keys to it. Some very large
Speaker 1: apartment buildings with a full time staff may take the
Speaker 1: mail from the carrier and provide mail sorting service near
Speaker 1: the mailboxes or some other location accessible by outsiders. A
Speaker 1: buzzer equivalent to a door bell may be available for
Speaker 1: each individual unit. In smaller buildings, such as two or
Speaker 1: three flats, or even floor flats, rubbish is often disposed
Speaker 1: of in trash containers similar to those used at houses.
Speaker 1: In larger buildings, rubbish is often collected in a common
Speaker 1: trash bin or dumpster for cleanliness or minimizing noise. Many
Speaker 1: lessers will place restrictions on tenants regarding smoking or keeping
Speaker 1: pets in an apartment. In more urban areas, apartments close
Speaker 1: to the downtown British English town or city center area
Speaker 1: have the benefits of proximity to jobs and or public transportation. However,
Speaker 1: prices per square foot are often much higher than in
Speaker 1: suburban areas. Moving up in size from studio flats are
Speaker 1: one bedroom apartments which contain a bedroom enclosed from the
Speaker 1: other rooms of the apartment, usually by an internal door.
Speaker 1: This is followed by two bedroom, three bedroom, et cetera.
Speaker 1: Apartments with more than three bedrooms are rare. Small apartments
Speaker 1: often have only one entrance. Large apartments often have two entrances,
Speaker 1: perhaps a door in the front and another in the back,
Speaker 1: or from an underground or otherwise attached parking structure. Depending
Speaker 1: on the building design, the entrance doors may be connected
Speaker 1: directly to the outside or to a common area inside,
Speaker 1: such as a hallway or a lobby. In many American cities,
Speaker 1: the one plus five style of mid rise wood framed
Speaker 1: apartments have gained significant popularity following a two thousand and
Speaker 1: nine revision to the International Building Code. These buildings typically
Speaker 1: feature four wood framed floors above a concrete podium and
Speaker 1: are popular with the developers due to their high density
Speaker 1: and relatively low construction costs. The Pueblan peoples of what
Speaker 1: is now the southwestern United States have constructed large, multi
Speaker 1: room dwellings, some comprising more than nine hundred rooms since
Speaker 1: the tenth century. In the classic period Mesoamerican city of Teotia,
Speaker 1: kan apartments were not only the standard means of housing
Speaker 1: the city's population of over two hundred thousand inhabitants, but
Speaker 1: show a remarkably even wealth distribution for the entire city,
Speaker 1: even by contemporary standards. Furthermore, the apartments were inhabited by
Speaker 1: the general populace as a whole, in contrast to other
Speaker 1: pre modern societies where apartments were limited to housing the
Speaker 1: lower class members of the society, as with a somewhat
Speaker 1: contemporary Roman insule. In ancient Rome, the Insulee singular Insula
Speaker 1: were large apartment buildings where the lower and middle classes
Speaker 1: of Romans dwelled. The floor at ground level was used
Speaker 1: for tabernay shops and businesses, with living space on the
Speaker 1: higher floors. Insully in Rome and other imperial cities reached
Speaker 1: up to ten or more stories, some with more than
Speaker 1: two hundred stairs. Several emperors, beginning with Augustus, attempted to
Speaker 1: establish limits of twenty to twenty five meters or multi
Speaker 1: story buildings, but met with only limited success. The lower
Speaker 1: floors were typically occupied by either shops or wealthy families,
Speaker 1: while the upper stories were rented out to the lower classes.
Speaker 1: Surviving Oxarinkus papyri indicate that seven story buildings even existed
Speaker 1: in provincial towns, such as in the third century Hermopolis
Speaker 1: in Roman Egypt,