Historically, flophouses, or British "doss-houses", have been used for overnight lodging by those who needed the lowest-cost alternative to staying with others, shelters, or sleeping outside. Generally, rooms are small, bathrooms are shared, and bedding is minimal, sometimes with mattresses or mats on the floor, or canvas sheets stretched between two horizontal beams creating a series of hammock-like beds. People who make use of these places have often been called
transients and have been between homes. Quarters are typically very small, and may resemble
office cubicles more than a regular room in a
hotel or an
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 around the early 1900s, 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 which ran along the rail lines, 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. Some city districts with flophouses in abundance became well known in their own right, such as the
Bowery in
Manhattan,
New York City. Since the middle 20th century, reforms there have gradually made flophouses scarcer. The resulting gentrification and higher real-estate value have further eroded the ability of flophouses and inexpensive boarding-style hotels to make a profit. ==21st-century revival==