The 1990s - when the rent was cheap

[jmecklenborg]

Supply and demand...the U.S. birthrate fell by roughly 25% between 1965 and 1975, plus there was tons of speculative suburban construction, meaning there were tons of cheap apartments in cities for young adults in the 1990s.

One thing you see over and over again in these photos is the use of the same lead white paint on the walls and window trim. That paint was made illegal in the 1970s but it was still everywhere in the 1990s, along with lead pipes. The non-lead oil paint from the 1980s stunk for days, didn't cover in less than three coats (primer + two coats), and didn't look very good even when done well. Latex paint technology has now gotten so good that you don't need primer, it dries fast, and it doesn't stink. The ease of painting is part of what has motivated all of the repainting of these places.

Most of these photos are from Providence, RI, Boston, MA, and New York City.



It's crazy seeing semi-trashed college apartments in what are now, undoubtedly, unaffordable HGTV/Instagrammable yuppie apartments and airbnbs.






















Somebody living in a garage or basement:






















This is before anyone had heard of granite countertops or "upgrading" a kitchen:




Before Starbuck's and chain restaurants infiltrated college campuses:








Every city had a lot of improvised music/dance venues:




Again, before anyone had heard of granite countertops:




big-time wrestling:






















Another unimproved kitchen:




You used to see the two-TV combo like this because they'd have a gaming system hooked up to one TV permanently so that they wouldn't have to keep switching the chords back and forth:

[xzmattzx]

These look like weekends in a college town to me.

[JManc]

The 90's were such a great era.

[destroycreate]

Every single place looks disgusting and really unappealing.

But god I miss the 90's.

I do envy hearing young people back then living in Manhattan for a few hundred dollars a month or showing up to NYC with $25 in their pocket and somehow just making it work.

Nowadays anywhere desirable or cool is barely possible to afford comfortably.

[Crawford]

The rent definitely wasn't cheap in NYC in the mid-1990's. I was too young to rent, but an older sibling rented, and as a city junkie, I remember helping with her search. The going rate for a one bedroom in a good part of town around 1996 was about $2,500/month. That translates to around $4,800/month today, so more or less unchanged.

The big difference is the geography of desirable locales has massively expanded. There were a ton of still sketchy neighborhoods with cheap rent, and that no longer exists to the same extent. But that's a great thing for renters. Far more choice.

Early 1990's, maybe? There was a pretty deep recession. Maybe mid-1970's, too, as NYC hit rock bottom. But I suspect prime parts of NYC have had high rents since the Dutch controlled the island.

[Busy Bee]

Anybody else looking for people you recognized? Most of those were a bit before my college days but "the look" is virtually the same.

[PHX31]

This was one of the coolest and most enjoyable threads on SSP in a while, thanks for posting. Those were definitely "the days". Young kids these days can probably find a similar situation and vibe with cheaper rents, it just won't be in similar spaces and locations. But maybe in 30 years kids then will look back at kids now with similar jealousy.

I was just about these kids age, or maybe slightly younger than some of them in some of the pics (I was a college freshman in 1997). I notice one girl playing N64 (edit), we played a lot of PS1 and N64 in my dorm. My dorm was a dingy old motel converted into dorm rooms (has since been demolished). So it looked and felt similar to these pics, but it just wasn't exactly in such old/historic and established downtown cities where it would be primo real estate these days.

[dave8721]

Not even just the 90s, the early 2000s were great too. I had a little apartment in the South Miami area of Miami. A nice walkable area, where I could walk to the metrorail and a gazillion restaurants and bars, grocery, basically anything I needed and it was only $580 a month when I first moved in. Those same little apartments go for over $2k a month now. Its the same apartment doesn't look like its been updated at all and if anything the neighborhood is less desirable now.

[badrunner]

Peak humanity right there (because human beings were still in control).

[James Bond Agent 007]

2 houses I lived in with 3-4 room mates in Seattle in the 90's, in the Roosevelt and Green Lake neighborhoods - I think each of us paid maybe $200-300/month in rent (I forget exactly). One house is now worth $1,172,200 and the other is worth $1,138,400, according to Zillow. I have a feeling those houses aren't rentals anymore.

[James Bond Agent 007]

The 90's.

• Video Link

[bnk]

Originally Posted by JManc

The 90's were such a great era.

80's and 90's were the best.

No computers, no cell phones. At most pagers and payphones still worked. You could even call collect if you didn't have the dime or nickel.

You really had to go to the library and make real human connections and physically find answers via the Dewey decimal system. One often needed to form study groups with likeminded friends to solve a simple question. We were more dependent working in teams to solve academic problems and study together to pass tough exams. Friends and bonds were made than that lasted for generations. We really had to work as a team. I see little of this team bonding today.

It was The last of the people that could self-learn and not simply just google answers and get an instant answer to anything.

Being broadly educated in most all fields was a real power back than.


I might be a bit nostalgic, but people were more kind to help a stranger in need and less worried about general crimes as petty as they were.

Plus little was concerned how one dressed if not working white collar. I used to go to college in my pajamas and no one cared.


I'm sure the same thing could be said about the 1880's.

[badrunner]

Be kind. Rewind. Bring back the 90s.

[Chef]

You can still live like that in Minneapolis. Which is probably why the type of young people from the upper Midwest who used to move to NYC or the west coast move here now. The sort of apartments shown in those photos is now around $1000 a month in the neighborhoods that young people want to live in which is affordable with a $20 an hour service job. I suspect a lot of Midwestern cities are like this.

[James Bond Agent 007]

Originally Posted by bnk

No computers, no cell phones.

??

They had computers in the 90's, they just weren't connected to the internet until the mid-late 90's and ran on DOS or Windows 3, Windows 95 or Windows 98. Or an Apple Macintosh.

They also had cell phones, just not smart phones. The 90's was the big era of building cell phone towers, in fact. I remember that because in the mid-90's I applied for several jobs doing cell phone tower permitting.

[bnk]

Originally Posted by James Bond Agent 007

??

They had computers in the 90's, they just weren't connected to the internet until the mid-late 90's and ran on DOS or Windows 3, Windows 95 or Windows 98. Or an Apple Macintosh.

They also had cell phones, just not smart phones. The 90's was the big era of building cell phone towers, in fact. I remember that because in the mid-90's I applied for several jobs doing cell phone tower permitting.

Yeah Computers were word processors, no internet connections.

You could play games like the Oregon trail and what not but there was no internet connection.

I think you are misunderstanding the 90's vs the 80's when I started college..

I'm referring more about the 80's than the 90's


I graduated very early in the 90's so my life story is soundly in the early to mid 80's. I hope that clears things up for you, but I did enjoy the 90's when I graduated..

[pj3000]

People of our age had the opportunity to live relatively cheaply in cities, and reap the benefits of living a cheap, urban college life.

Those days are long gone within a 20 year timeframe… which is unbelievable to me.

[jmecklenborg]

Originally Posted by xzmattzx

These look like weekends in a college town to me.

These photos were taken from https://www.instagram.com/90sartschool/, mostly pretty early from the page's posts, which are mostly RISD students in Providence, RI. I pretty much just picked out photos that showed apartments, not the dorms.

The instagram page currently has over 1,300 photos, so it's a pretty huge collection, and will take you an hour to get through.

[MolsonExport]

ah, the nineties. When I had a really nice Montreal apartment on Mont Royal (overlooking the downtown), ~450sq feet + balcony, for less than $500 Canadian.

I first got on the internet in 1994. Had my first (hated) cell in 1995 (for work).

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by pj3000

People of our age had the opportunity to live relatively cheaply in cities, and reap the benefits of living a cheap, urban college life.

Those days are long gone within a 20 year timeframe… which is unbelievable to me.

You can still live cheaply in cities... even in NYC. You just can't live as cheaply in the same areas that were cheap 20-30 years ago.