A bedsit, bedsitter, or bed-sitting room is a form of rented accommodation common in some parts of the United Kingdom and Ireland which consists of a single room per occupant with all occupants typically sharing a bathroom. Bedsits are included in a legal category of dwellings referred to as houses in multiple occupation (HMO).
Bedsits arose from the subdivision of larger dwellings into low-cost accommodation at low conversion cost. In the UK a growing desire for personal independence after World War II led to a reduced demand for traditional boarding houses with communal dining. Bedsits are often occupied by young single people, students, those unable to purchase their own properties, or those whose occupancy is of a transitory nature; the cost is typically lower than for other types of property. Someone whose employment is a long distance from his/her home may sometimes rent a bedsit to reduce the cost and inconvenience of daily travel.
In 2013, regulations came into force in Ireland, under which landlords were obliged to provide each tenant with a separate bathroom, a four-ring cooker, access to laundry facilities and other basic facilities, or risk being fined up to €5,000.
Other countries
The Canadian and American equivalents to a bedsit are single room occupancy (SRO) and rooming house. By comparison, a studio apartment (known as a studio flat in the United Kingdom) is a one-room apartment with a small adjoining kitchen, typically with its own toilet or bathroom with toilet.
A bedsit can also be compared to a Soviet communal apartment, in which a common kitchen, bathroom, toilet, and telephone are shared by several families, each of which lives in a single room opening up onto a common hallway.
In Nigeria, a similar equivalent of a bedsit is the Face-to-face apartment buildings, where a group of one or two room apartments have their entrances facing each other along a walkway, which leads to the main entrance of the building which consists the apartments. The apartments, which often have shared bathrooms and kitchen spaces, are low rent and are commonly used by the low income residents because of their affordability.
Bedsits were once common in Dublin and other towns in Ireland, although had been impractical to implement after the introduction of planning permission in 1963. Bedsits were banned in 2008 by the Housing (Standards for Rented Houses) Regulations 2008[1], with a phase out date of February 2013. The Health Service Executive and approved housing bodies can still offer equivalent accommodation, which is mostly used as emergency accommodation for the homeless.