Flophouse

A flophouse (US English), doss-house or dosshouse (British English) is a place that offers very cheap lodging, generally by providing only minimal services.

Characteristics

Occupants of flophouses generally share bathroom facilities and reside in very tight quarters. The people who make use of these places are often transients. Quarters in flophouses are typically very small, and may resemble office cubicles more than a regular room in a hotel or apartment building. Some flophouses qualify as boarding houses, but only if they offer meals.

American flophouses date at least to the 19th century, but the term "flophouse" itself is only attested from 1904, originating in hobo slang. In the past, flophouses were sometimes called "lodging houses" or "workingmen's hotels" and catered to hobos and transient workers such as seasonal railroad and agriculture workers, or migrant lumberjacks who would travel west during the summer to work and then return to an eastern or midwestern city such as Chicago to stay in a flophouse during the winter. This is described in the 1930 novel The Rambling Kid by Charles Ashleigh and the 1976 book The Human Cougar by Lloyd Morain. Another theme in Morain's book is the gentrification which was then beginning and which has led cities to pressure flophouses to close.