Young Man, There's (Not) A Place You Can Go: The Death of YMCA Housing & What Japanese Internet Cafés Can Teach Us
YMCA used to have everything for young men to enjoy; You could hang out with all the boys
When “Fun to Stay” Became Nowhere to Live
In 1978, the Village People released a disco anthem celebrating the Young Men’s Christian Association. The song painted the YMCA as a refuge where young men could find everything they needed; a place to stay, meals, recreation, and companionship. “They have everything for you men to enjoy, you can hang out with all the boys,” the group sang, inadvertently documenting what would soon become a thing of the past.
The bitter irony, a triumph of generational prioritization, is that just as this celebration of the YMCA entered popular culture, the organization was getting rid of the units that the song celebrates. By the time the song topped charts worldwide, the YMCA’s great contraction was already underway. The place where you could “get yourself clean” and “have a good meal” was vanishing, replaced by suburban fitness centers catering to middle-class families.
When You’re Short on Your Dough: The $500,000 Problem That $30 Rooms Once Solved
The fiscal insanity of America’s housing policy becomes clear when comparing costs. The YMCA once provided rooms for what amounts to $20 to 30 per night in today’s dollars, sustainable on even on $7.50/hr in today’s dollars considering people paying at least over 30% of their income on housing now. Today, a single unit of subsidized affordable housing in the Bay Area costs around $500,000 to develop, and I don’t need to say anything about how much it is to rent, even with Section 8 for the lucky ones. Cities routinely spend $35,000 to $75,000 annually per jail bed housing those who commit whatever, even for the act of being homeless.
The property tax implications are equally stark. Vacant office buildings generate minimal revenue while requiring city services. In contrast, properties with ADUs in California showed annualized appreciation of 9.34% versus 7.65% for those without, demonstrating how adding units increases municipal tax bases. Applied to commercial conversions, this suggests converting vacant offices to SRO-style housing would generate substantial new revenue streams for struggling downtowns.
They Destroyed All the Places: A Geography of Deliberate Elimination
Municipalities waged a quiet war through regulatory means. Building codes, fire codes, and zoning ordinances were weaponized to make new SRO construction impossible and existing maintenance economically unviable. SROs were labeled “forbidden housing; their residents, forbidden citizens”. New zoning banned mixing residential and commercial uses, severing residents from the walkable cafes, laundromats, and shops their lifestyle required. These policies, cloaked in language of safety and public health, had the clear intent and effect of regulating an entire class of affordable housing out of existence.
New York City: From approximately 200,000 SRO units in the 1950s to just 25,000 post-1955, an 87.5% reduction in the nation’s densest city where housing need was greatest.
San Francisco: The city that now epitomizes the housing crisis once had 65,000 hotel units in 1910, reduced to just 19,000 residential SRO rooms today, a 71% decline while population grew.
Chicago: Lost 81% of its SRO stock between 1960 and 1980 alone, including the conversion of iconic properties like the Lawson House, which transformed 600 SRO rooms into just 406 studio apartments.
National Scale: Nearly one million SRO units eliminated between 1955 and 2013, representing the largest destruction of affordable housing in American history.
When They Had Everything for Young Men to Enjoy: Christians Building 100,000 Rooms
The contrast between generations could not be starker. The YMCA was founded in 1844 London by George Williams, a 22-year-old department store worker who saw young men struggling with “hazards of life on the streets”. When it spread to America in 1851, it found a nation undergoing massive urbanization, with young men flooding into cities for industrial work.
The Christian response was unequivocal: build housing. By the 1920s, business titans like Cyrus Hall McCormick Jr. were funding massive construction projects. Between 1922 and 1940, YMCA accommodations grew from 55,000 to over 100,000 rooms—more than any hotel chain. By 1950, 670 of 1,688 American YMCAs provided residential spaces with 66,959 beds.
These facilities offered comprehensive support: English classes, vocational training in electricity and photography, and direct job placement assistance. The Wabash Avenue YMCA served African Americans during segregation. During both World Wars, YMCAs housed soldiers and veterans. Notable residents included Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr., and Jack Kerouac. I have to stress that churches in the modern era are pushing for “Yes in God’s Backyard” laws to help with the homelessness crisis, not to mention trying to do the Christian thing to do, often with heavy opposition from those of the same generation than help bring down SROs.
The Great Betrayal: Generational Warfare by the Numbers
The data reveals a stark generational divide in both housing outcomes and political power:
Housing Disparities
51% of homeowners 50+ have no mortgage, while younger generations face record debt
Millennial homeownership rates lag 8-9 percentage points behind Baby Boomers at the same age
Nearly 50% of 18-29 year-olds live with parents, highest since the Great Depression
70% of Americans believe young adults have a harder time buying homes than their parents
Political Control
The destruction of SROs continues because public hearings on housing are dominated by older, financially stable homeowners, while renters, younger people, are systematically underrepresented. Local governments frequently cater to NIMBY opposition, not just with apartments and SROs, but even against housing for old people and playgrounds .
Dismantling the Opposition’s False Narratives
“SROs Were Dangerous Flophouses”
The YMCA facilities were professionally managed institutions with strict rules and comprehensive services. They offered vocational training, job placement, English classes, gymnasiums, and cafeterias. Modern manga kissas (cafes) similarly maintain order through membership systems requiring photo ID and 24/7 staff presence. Case in point: ‘YMCA’ has become a universal American anthem, played everywhere from Trump rallies to sports stadiums. It is just absurd if you think about it: a president dances to a song celebrating the very type of affordable housing his generation destroyed.
“This Will Lower Property Values”
Empirical evidence consistently refutes this for the standard line. Harvard research using difference-in-difference estimation found no negative impact on neighboring property values when you upzone. Properties with ADUs appreciate faster than those without. Please retire this cliche.
“Infrastructure Can’t Handle Density”
ADU households own an average of 0.9 cars versus the national average of 1.8. Research shows substantial surplus parking in single-family neighborhoods. ADUs average just 0.2 children per unit, having negligible impact on schools. As infill development, they leverage existing infrastructure rather than requiring extensions.
The Asian Model: Market Success at Scale
Japan’s Internet Cafes & Manga Kissa (Cafes)
Japan operates thousands of manga kissas with major chains like Gera Gera, Manboo, and Popeye running hundreds of locations each. A single facility might have 50-100 booths. The “net café refugees” phenomenon involves thousands of residents, predominantly young men in temporary or low-wage work.
Financial sustainability comes through diversification:
Food and beverage sales (30-40% of revenue)
Premium services (private rooms, better seating)
Korea’s 20,000 PC Bangs
Korea has over 20,000 PC bangs—more ubiquitous than Starbucks. They emerged during the late-1990s Asian financial crisis when young men needed affordable social spaces. The model works through:
24/7 operation accommodating all work schedules
The Regulatory Arbitrage
These succeed by operating in regulatory gray zones—classified as “service providers” rather than hotels. They sell internet access and workspace; that people sleep there is legally incidental.
The Economic Reality: Gig Work Demands Flexible Housing
The traditional housing market assumes stable, full-time employment with predictable income, a reality increasingly divorced from modern work:
The New Precariat
49.7% of all renting households are cost-burdened, spending over 30% of income on housing
Student loan debt forces young adults to delay household formation
22% of homeowners would finance ADU construction with personal savings, showcasing that non traditional or unorthodox financing would be required for the more atypical housing unit.
The Geographic Mismatch
Jobs concentrate in expensive metros while workers can afford only distant suburbs. The office-to-residential conversion opportunity exists precisely where workers need housing, downtown cores with vacant commercial space from remote work and e-commerce.
From “It’s Fun to Stay” to “You Can’t Live Anywhere”: The Broken Promise
The lyrics now function as a darkly ironic checklist of broken promises (more evidence that God has a sardonic sense of humor):
The promise of a place for young men → As cities target and force off the market SROs, especially to eliminate places for young men.
When money is tight → Modern “affordable” housing requires extensive documentation, credit checks, deposits, and time that may be scare.
A place to stay → By 2004, only 81 of 2,594 YMCAs maintained any residential units
They can help you → Current YMCA housing requires minimum $1,500 monthly income and disability diagnoses
A fun place to stay → It’s now impossible to stay at most YMCAs
“Young Men, There’s a Place You Can Go”: Simple Clean Bills Creates Housing
Housing crises are policy choices, cities used “poison pills”(excessive parking requirements, discretionary reviews, prohibitive fees, etc), annual ADU permits statewide totaled approximately 1,000 in 2016.
After California state laws AB 2299, SB 1069, AB 68, AB 881 mandated by-right approval: 24,000+ permits by 2022. Los Angeles alone: 80 permits in 2016 to over 7,000 in 2022. In six years, California permitted 88,885 ADUs.
ADU bills are usually cleaner and focus on legalizing a single type of housing units. Considering how regulatory arbitrage legalized Internet cafes in Japan and Korea, it is the path forward for to legalize something similar in America and Europe.
Young Man, They Took Away Your Place to Go: The Reckoning
America once operated the world’s largest network of affordable housing for young men, 100,000 YMCA rooms, part of over a 1,000,000 SROs, serving as launching pads for careers and works, and with luck, into families and civic participation. Only to destroyed this while spending billions managing the predictable consequences.
The comparison isn’t exactly flattering:
Then: $20 to 30/night rooms with services, dignity, and opportunity
Now: $50,000+ annually per homeless individual for emergency response, and that’s just the *tip* of the iceberg.
Japan and Korea prove markets naturally evolve solutions when not constrained. Their thousands of Internet cafes and manga kissas and 20,000+ PC bangs profitably house the same demographic America abandons. I don’t view this as the end all be all, Japan and Korea (and others) has a lot more to do (especially for family housing) but it’s certainly better on this issue than America.
The infrastructure exists, especially vacant offices and dead retail. The demand is obvious, half of young adults living with parents. The models are proven that we can adapt to quickly turn unused commercial areas into housing, especially as internet cafés operating profitably worldwide. We know that legalizing a type of housing enables more of it to be built, especially by small to mid size builders and contractors like in California’s ADU revolution.
What America lacks is moral courage to admit that previous generations built better solutions than we destroyed, that young men deserve the opportunities their grandfathers had, and that “there’s a place you can go” should be more than lyrics about a vanished past.
I can understand the security and cleanliness concerns, and I know that the American context is less “coherent” than the Japanese one. That is a problem we should resolve, but never as an excuse to tolerate this miserable status quote for young men.
I can barely keep on a mask of civility, and have done a lot of edits to this article (especially as the earlier drafts is a bit “darker”). I do feel the moral need to point this out. Depression era generations, especially the Golden Generation who fought during WW2 and the Korean War, wanted housing and stability and viewed that it wasn’t just their responsibility to provide it, but some in part of a matter of religious duty.
Boomers, on the other hand, well the less said the better, considering recent polls made it clear that a majority of them (around 57%) view the younger generations at fault for the lack of housing. This is not an issue of young people vs old, I mean Japan for god’s sake is proof against this fake narrative when it comes to housing. This is a generation in America, Britain, etc in a period of time that decided that the generation after that shouldn’t have the housing options they had.
The song remains the same, but the places are gone. In Japan, young men can still find everything they need to enjoy, despite the broader economic conditions. In America, they can only hang out with all the boys in their parents’ basements, and that’s only if they are lucky.
In another article, we’ll explore the practical implementation of 24/7 internet café-style housing in American and European cities, the regulatory frameworks, business models, and adaptive reuse principles that could transform vacant commercial spaces into modern housing for a generation locked out of traditional options. Comment if I should write it or have ideas.