Subterranean homesick blues

January 12, 2006 3:04 PM

Should I be concerned about subterranean living?

In the runaway housing market that is New York City, I often see listings for apartments on low floors. I've seen many duplex apartments that say "first floor" but are really five steps up and eight steps down from ground level.

My gut tells me that I wouldn't want to live in one of these places because the bedrooms are, in essence, underground. To me, the halfway-underground "first floors" may have less natural light and air circulation. If I lived in such a place and had children at some point, they'd ostensibly be sleeping underground, too, as it were. Then again, I like sunlit rooms and open windows, so it could be just my personal preference.

Does my disinclination have any scientific merit? Are there forces at play (mildew, air quality, lack of light, etc.) that can do long-term damage to one's physiological well-bring after a few years of sleeping underground? Or is it purely a matter of personal choice?

Note that I am not currently buying an apartment, nor is my wife pregnant. I'm just curious about the dwellings.

posted by werty to home & garden (23 answers total)

Purely anecdotal, but I lived in a basement apartment for three months, and I swear I came out of there depressed with general malaise and an un-ending chest cold. Could be attributed to a lot of things, but I don't think being underground helped anything. (I was working from home at the time, too, so I was spending up a huge amount of time there.)
posted by Zosia Blue at 3:09 PM on January 12, 2006

Based on my one basement apartment experience (in Washington, DC, where they're hard to avoid), I wouldn't do it again. I just felt claustrophobic, like the upper floors were sinking down on top of me or something (this wasn't a dramatic mental breakdown, more like low-level background noise). We also had flooding problems whenever the drain in the patio backed up (which was often).

Oh, and bugs. Lots of bugs. The explosion of flying ants was a favorite morning.
posted by occhiblu at 3:14 PM on January 12, 2006

Then again, I like sunlit rooms and open windows, so it could be just my personal preference.

some people are more and some people less sensitive to these things, but basically all human beings need light & air, and in most places a certain amount of access to it is city code (e.g., you can't have a bedroom with no windows).

I have twice lived in a room with limited light/air - with one window facing an alley, typa thing - and both times it was hell. It seriously affected my mood and energy, and I don't doubt it had more subtle health effects. The first time it had not occurred to me to think about it; i moved into the place because it was cheap, and it was only after a few months of living there that I started to ask, why am I always so tired and listless when I come home? The second time it had been some years, and the place was, again, a deal, so I thought perhaps I was remembering the first time as worse than it really was. I invested in halogenic lamps and really nice paint colors & various other home decorating things to make the place really "cosy", etc. But it did not work. I was completely miserable. (and in contrast, the two places where I have been the happiest had windows on two sides - not necessarily larger or better spaces, just better light/air).

It may be hard for us to measure exactly, but fresh air & natural light is just good for you. I am still occasionally tempted by the apparent cuteness / cheapness / whatever of a place without much light, but I will not do it again. It's not just a preference - it may be more of a disposition or something, ie, it may not be the same degree of importance to everyone, but it can really fuck you up if you're the type to be fucked up by it.
posted by mdn at 3:16 PM on January 12, 2006

It just occurred to me that my college boyfriend also lived in a basement apartment for a while. He kept the teeny tiny windows completely covered, and used to watch the local cable access channel, which showed the legs of people walking by outside the studio, all the time. The whole thing was very weird and may be contributing to my wariness about the whole underground thing.
posted by occhiblu at 3:18 PM on January 12, 2006

I had an apartment on the ground level once (not even underground) and I had problems with bugs. Yuck, never again.

Look at your average house... most are actually 2 or three blocks (cement) above ground. There is a reason for that.
posted by rdurbin at 3:18 PM on January 12, 2006

centipedes
posted by showmethecalvino at 3:22 PM on January 12, 2006

Radon.
posted by PROD_TPSL at 3:27 PM on January 12, 2006

To counter some of the anecdotes posted so far, I've lived in basement suites (halfway underground) in Vancouver and Edmonton, and never had any problems. I'm not particularly sensitive to sunlight and open air, though.

It's pretty common for university students in Vancouver to live in basement suites, since they're cheaper than other rentals.

Security might be an issue, since your place would be immediately accessible from the street outside.
posted by russilwvong at 3:30 PM on January 12, 2006

I live in a "first floor" basement unit and yes, we have problems with lighting, and with mold. I'm not sure if that'll be a problem in New York, but here in Seattle, walls that face dirt instead of air have big mold problems. And the air circulation is an issue as well.

We're looking at places above ground for our next apartment... fuck this mold.
posted by salad spork at 3:45 PM on January 12, 2006

I live in a (tiny) basement flat. I love it. I can't decide whether it reminds me more of a cabin in ST:TNG or Hitler's bunker.
posted by veedubya at 4:21 PM on January 12, 2006

I don't have a problem with the first floor or half-submerged thing. One thing I will say is that if you live on a noisy street, the closer you are to street level, the more of the noise that will make it into your apartment.
posted by Afroblanco at 4:50 PM on January 12, 2006

I lived in a basement apartment (and it was an illegal one, because it didn't have exitable windows) - it was very cheap, and I really didn't mind it that much.

I liked the painted cement floors, free cable, cheap rent, the temperature (hot in the winter, due to exposed hot water pipes), and the location; I didn't like the occasional mustiness, the temperature (HOT in the summer, due to exposed hot water pipes), and the way the shower drain would back up with sewage after it rained really hard.
posted by sluggo at 5:22 PM on January 12, 2006

My friend lived in a beautiful three-bedroom basement flat, which didn't seem too dark at all, actually. huge rooms too. But I only spent about two hours there, right enough. And he is a bit odd.
posted by bonaldi at 5:58 PM on January 12, 2006

When I started a new job I took a basement apartment, mainly because it was cheap ($75 a month). Cool in the summer, warm in the winter, I liked it because I was working the night shift and had no problem sleeping in the day.

I ended up buying a dehumidifier, in summer it was just damp and clammy. One nice thing, it was a half exposed basement, so it had a separate entrance and a nice big window in the kitchen.
posted by Marky at 6:23 PM on January 12, 2006

In Crime and Punishment Dostoevsky mused "...low ceilings and tiny rooms cramp the soul and the mind." I couldn't agree more.
posted by furtive at 6:32 PM on January 12, 2006

I lived in a ground floor apartment in Brooklyn for a year, and it was miserable. My windows opened up onto the area where everybody took their trash out, so I could never open them, and I (being a young woman living alone) never really even opened the drapes either because I didn't want everyone in the neighborhood to be able to see in. So I vote for "depressing".
posted by MsMolly at 6:36 PM on January 12, 2006

My main complaint about ground floor apartments is it's too easy for people to see in, and to break in. I once asked a locksmith what the most secure location in an apartment building is. His answer: anywhere but the ground floor.
posted by GoatCactus at 7:51 PM on January 12, 2006

Bugs, by which I mean cockroaches and crickets, can be a larger problem than above-ground dwellings. Dampness, also a persistant problem. But wall-hangings and a committment to cozy-ness can make a basement apartment (particularly if it's, say, a great deal) a nice place to live. I always thought I'd hate this kind of place, but my friend's apartment changed my mind.
posted by desuetude at 9:06 PM on January 12, 2006

I live in a garden apartment now (which is what those "half-submerged" apartments are sometimes called). It's in Astoria, two blocks from the subway, in the back of the building. There are two windows, one about five feet long and three feet high, the other about three and a half feet long and three feet high. They look out onto a garden: in the summer there are roses and blackberry bushes and flowers (although the carpenter ants killed the maple and the mimosa tree was beginning to be a problem, so they were both cut down last summer; the ivy has been cut back, too, because it was grasping too fondly onto a neighboring brick building). I also have a door that lets out onto the yard. The apartment is probably about five feet underground, about four feet above it.

And it's fine. It was humid in the summer. I bought a dehumidifier but my landlord gave me an air conditioner which was a much better thing. Now, in the winter, it's very dry--but then so was every other apartment I've ever lived in during the winter (except in the Caribbean). There is a bit of a mildew problem, but I've seen worse in older completely above-ground apartments. Bleach and a brush every few weeks solves it. There was a bit of a musty smell when I moved in but it's gone now--three times in the last six weeks I've spent more than a week out of town and when I come back I don't smell mustiness, I smell my cooking (even with all the dishes washed and put away--it's the character both of my cooking, with lots of spices, and of any small apartment--the cooking smells adhere to the wall; every once in a while I have to take a towel to the bathroom wall because the normal shower humidity has caused the cooking odors to accumulate into visible, bezar-flavored rivulets).

The heat and cold are within my power: I control the thermostat.

The darkness isn't much of a problem. Especially with the maple tree gone, if it's not cloudy, I get direct sunlight through my windows for at least an hour every day. Even cloudy, it's bright enough to potter around. I have lived in darker multi-floor walkups. In the summer, I open the door that lets out onto the yard and even more light pours in. I also have full-spectrum bulbs in four lamps that properly illuminate my working, cooking, and reading areas.

I'd say in New York City you should always go look at every apartment, no matter what. I looked at three other basement or quasi-basement apartments. They were horrible. One had no kitchen. Two had low ceilings--lower than six feet. One had no bathroom, just a shower-like stall about three feet above the floor in a closet with a toilet, the kind of situation where the toilet paper would get wet and you could never take a shower while someone else used the porcelain.

My apartment is nothing like that and costs $650 a month and I'm glad. It's nice. I like it.
posted by Mo Nickels at 9:43 PM on January 12, 2006

I should also add: I have drywall walls (not concrete), a smooth linoleum floor, white paint everywhere, good water pressure, a perfectly decent kitchen area with a four-burner stove, an oven, and a full refrigerator. The windows are double-paned.

I add all this just to reinforce the idea that sometimes the best apartments are the ones that sound odd at first read.
posted by Mo Nickels at 9:46 PM on January 12, 2006

If this thread hasn't answered your question yet, I don't think that it ever will. To summarize: cockroaches, centipedes, burglars, depression, mold, darkness, mustiness, flooding, and raw sewage.

Oh, and the glowing review that stands out, from veedubya: I live in a (tiny) basement flat. I love it. I can't decide whether it reminds me more of a cabin in ST:TNG or Hitler's bunker. Lovely. Probably sarcastic, but whatever.

Not trying to snark, but it seems like you've either made up your mind or not at this point, yes?
posted by spiderwire at 10:14 PM on January 12, 2006

On the plus side, whenever the raw sewage backed up in my SHOWER, I would call the landlord and say, "It's happening... again." And then I wouldn't have to pay rent that month (but I had to clean it myself, which wasn't so great).
posted by sluggo at 4:33 AM on January 13, 2006

Mo Nickels is right that it's good to see the individual places themselves, not decide according to descriptions, but it's also important to bring with you certain 'check points', like how high the ceilings are and how many windows you have, or whatever you have found to make a difference to you. The first dark apartment I lived in, I moved into because my friend lived there, and I'd always loved her place - it had hardwood floors and was big for NYC, and it just had charm and seemed so cute & cosy etc. It was not until long after I moved in that I realized the correlation between my mood/energy and the lack of light in the place. So just be aware of what makes a difference to you and keep it in mind, because something can look good when you visit but not work long term. (If you are the type to get 'winter blues', e.g., don't do it.)

I've been a ridiculous nomad in this city since the early 90s, and the plus side of this is that I have a lot of data to know which attributes make a difference to me - and Fyodor hit the nail on the head as far as I'm concerned... the same way the high ceiling of a cathedral lifts your spirit up, the low ceiling of a basement room will squash it.
posted by mdn at 7:51 AM on January 13, 2006