"Urban Dorms" for Young Professionals

So you're a young college graduate eager to make your way in the world. You want to strike out on your own, yet your modest starting salary doesn't begin to cover rent in the big city where you live and work. So what do you do?

In New York City and other metro areas with ridiculously high real estate prices, young people are turning to "urban dorms" in which creative landlords match groups of renters together in single, large apartments (a task made easier by online classified systems like Craigslist). For affordable (yet still hefty) rent in a safe and desirable location, the tradeoff is a lack of space and privacy.

Urban dorms appear to be meeting a need. However, the greater problem in many cities are real estate prices that are out of synch with the means of the majority of their residents. Urban dorms, therefore, represent a workaround rather than a direct solution to one of the major problems in urban America.

Source: New York Times