Metro

The living is squeezy: Mayor

525050429--525x200.jpg

(
)

GRAND TOUR: Mayor Bloomberg and Planning Commissioner Amanda Burden yesterday look over a mock-up of a “micro-unit” apartment — whose real borders are marked by yellow tape. (Kristy Leibowitz)

And you thought you lived in a shoe box!

Mayor Bloomberg yesterday unveiled a “microunit” apartment that would make even hardened NewYorkers claustrophobic.

Tiny homes like it — between 275 and 300 square feet, the size of some ATM vestibules in Times Square—will be built in Kips Bay.

They are part of a pilot program to find housing for people who live alone or with only a partner.

The spaces are small, but the prices aren’t. They’ll likely rent for less than the market rate, which is $2,000 per month, officials said. But the final price will be set by the developer.

“We want people to come here — to start out, start their careers here, start their families here — and if you don’t have the kind of housing that they need, they can’t do that,” Bloomberg said yesterday while standing amid a prototype of a micro-unit.

RELATED: CLOSET HAS MORE HANGOUT SPACE

The 10- by 30- foot apartments must each have windows and a kitchen area, a request for proposals released by the city specifies. Each also has to have a separate bathroom, just 10 feet long but equipped with the necessities—a tub, sink and regular-sized toilet.

As for the bedroom, look no further than the living room. Tenants need a sofa bed, renderings show.

While some Manhattan renters said they were ready to sign on, others were revolted.

“Those are shoe-box-sized apartments!” said Carrie Goldman, 36, a video editor who lives in a Gramercy apartment for less.

“Two thousand dollars is not really affordable housing.”

But bartender Alison Davis, 29, seemed more flexible because of the “amenities” — like sunlight.

“As long as it has windows, yeah, I’d live in it. It’s good rent for Manhattan,” she said, adding she lives in a smaller space on the Lower East Side with two people.

The first 60 micro-units are part of a plan in which developers will pay to construct a building on city-owned land at East 27th Street near First Avenue.

Developers have until Sept. 14 to submit ideas. Public hearings will end in late 2013, and the construction will begin as late as 2014, officials said.

The planned apartments — slightly larger than a dorm room and half the size of a subway car — are so small, they’re actually currently illegal, since the law requires new apartments to be 400 square feet or larger.

But Bloomberg said he’ll propose a change to that law.

Nearly 2 million households in Manhattan are made up of only one or two people, but there are only 1 million studio and one-bedroom apartments available.

Even the billionaire mayor, who calls an Upper East Side townhouse home, said he would live in one — if he were younger.

He lived in a 600-square-foot studio at 333 E. 66th St. for $120 a month for nearly a decade.

“I would’ve taken a smaller one if I could possibly have found it,” Bloomberg said.

Additional reporting by Kenneth Garger and Amelia Harris