Quote:
Originally Posted by Cirrus
Overpopulation? Absolutely not. Most of the land in our cities today remains horribly underpopulated, even in cities that are at their peak today.
White Flight and family size aside, another major major difference between then and now is that it used to be the most common way to rent an apartment was to rent a spare room in someone's house. This was called "being a boarder" or "taking on a boarder." That practice is more or less gone today, partly because of social norms but also partly because of zoning, that, for example, has made it illegal for a house to have two kitchens.
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Having/being a boarder was actually fairly common in the early half of the 20th Century; in fact, many people took on boarders during the Great Depression to help make ends meet; some boarders even helped with the family chores. When you go through census records of the 1920s through the 1940s, you'll often see boarders living in a household.