Bedsit

From ArticleWorld

A Bedsit is a furnished one-roomed unit of accommodation usually consisting of combined bedroom and sitting-room with some cooking facilities. It is generally rented out to students near university areas and is sometimes also referred to as a studio. It denotes one self contained room in which the occupant eats, sleeps and studies. A bedsit ordinarily does not have its own private bathroom and lavatory; these are usually shared with other occupants in the house. Large homes are generally split up into several bedsitters with the owner living on the premises.

Prices will depend on the size and quality of the room, the area in which it is located and how it is heated. Typically, bedsits do not have a separate kitchen and more often than not the occupants make do with a gas ring and an electric kettle.

Bedsits came into existence when the upkeep of large dilapidated town houses became too much for the owners to bear and necessitated their being divided into several one room, independent units. This worked both ways. The growing town populace found easy and inexpensive accommodation and the owners found the money to keep the house in paint. With the break up of traditional homes and families around late 1940’s the need for individualism grew and common eating facilities, usually found in traditional boarding houses were sacrificed for privacy and solitude.

Nomenclatures

In Austria bedsits are called flatettes and are not associated with the same genteel poverty as the bedsits are in Britain. In America bedsits are called SROs – single room occupancy hotels and are generally equipped with a small adjacent kitchen and an attached bathroom.