Return of the Murphy bed: Board approves South Boston building with a fold-away bed in one apartment

Scare me. I worry, what if it snaps up and traps me inside?

When I was an undergrad @ MIT I lived in a dorm room which was less than 100 sq ft. in a brand new [at the time] building. It came with a built-in armoire [with shelves and drawers and a tallish section where you could hang up a suit or a long coat], a desk, some wall shelves, a floor lamp and a small bed.

5 of these individual rooms were called a Suite -- and they shared a small kitchen [stove, refrigerator] and a bathroom with shower and a small lounge [a bit bigger than the individual rooms].

Several of these Suites were grouped into what was called an Entry [kind of a non-fraternity] which shared a large lounge [typically very nice view of the Charles]. In my era [all guys] there was a large apartment for a grad student who kept us in line. Later MIT cannibalized the grad student apartment to provide each Entry with a large kitchen and study / game rooms -- I think to attract female students to the dorm.

Finally the dorm with about 350 units had a number of common areas which provided various services such as self-service laundry, a good sized library [since cannibalized for other functions] a gym [very rudimentary in my day] and some undefined space in the basement [where we played a strange version of volleyball [bounces off the ceiling were in play].

No reason why Boston couldn't allow such a facility to be built for young adults [sort of immediate post-student years] who just needed a place to "hang their hats" while they worked 75 or so hours per week in tech or biotech. Such a plan housing say 5,000 to 10,000 in such facilities scattered about the business parts of the city would go a long way to easing the housing crunch.

Less fancy versions of such a facility [boarding or rooming houses] used to be located in all cities -- until do-gooders decided to ban them as being what? [undignified?] as opposed to what? [living on the street?].