This is what it looks like to live with 17 roommates in a 500 sq foot space
Cage homes are sort of Hong Kong’s dirty secret. I’ve posted about them before but in this time of COVID-19, the living conditions seem even more exhausting and dangerous considering the close proximity of these living quarters.
Early 20th Century kit houses from Sears
I didn’t know this, but at one point in America, Sears sold material to build pre-fab kit houses with instructions printed in Popular Mechanics. The magazine has written up quite an interesting backstory about this short-lived phenomenon and even detail how some of those houses still exist today — built entirely by relatively unskilled would-be home owners.
If you’re curious, here’s a website that details some of the most popular Sears home styles you could buy at the time. Also, the Internet Archive has a fully scanned catalog you can look at.
