City to determine if Common’s co-living space is an illegal SRO

Crown Heights building offers month-by-month shared room rentals

Hargreaves Pacific
From left: Brad Hargreaves, 1162 Pacific Street and a living room in one of the Common apartments

New York banned new single-room occupancy hotels in the 1950s, but city officials are investigating whether co-living spaces like Common in Crown Heights amount to the same practice in a new guise.

The Department of Buildings said it will inspect the company’s Brooklyn townhouse at 1162 Pacific Street. Common maintains four full-floor units at the building, which it rents as 19 separate bedrooms with shared kitchens and bathrooms.

Tenants at the space are required to stay for a minimum of a month, so the building isn’t classified as a hotel. The company also asks each new combination of tenants to sign a new lease agreement.

In traditional SROs, tenants signed individually with the landlord, Crain’s reported.

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Common CEO Brad Hargreaves defended the company to Crain’s, insisting it wasn’t offering SROs. “We are looking forward to working with [the Department of Buildings] to resolve this,” he said.

Rooms at Common’s space don’t come cheap, with rents as high as $1,900, nearly double the cost of a typical Crown Heights apartments on a per-unit basis.

The company has raised $7.35 million in venture funding to date. [Crain’s]Ariel Stulberg