And you thought your college dorm was awful

If I gave any thought whatsoever to where flight attendants sleep during layovers - which I admittedly don't do all that often - it would be to assume that they were put up, by their airlines, in a hotel. This assumption would be based on the many times over the years I've seen flight crews wheeling their bags through hotel lobbies. Fly the friendly skies, put your little headie down in a comfy hotel.

So what's up with the illegal, unpermitted crash pad near Logan Airport where 19 flight attendants have been chipping in $300 a month each to bunk - literally - in an apartment that the City of Boston has just declared "unfit for habitation?" But a nice hefty monthly take for the slumlord who owns the joint.

The East Boston property, above what was originally built as a parking and repair garage, had been converted into a cramped apartment, where short-term residents slept in bunk beds and shared a kitchen, officials said. The building had no smoke alarms and only one exit. (Source: Boston Globe)

Inspectional services was called in after the Boston Fire Department tipped them off. BRD had been called in when one of the residents contacted them to report a faulty electrical panel. The firefighters secured the panel but, having gotten a gander at the surrounds, dimed the place. 

On Tuesday, inspectors found that the garage’s second floor had been converted to two residential quarters, while the first floor was being used to improperly store flammable materials, including gasoline, officials said. 

Here's what this charm spot looks like from the outside. On the inside, the basement was full of items like gas cans and all sorts of other things that might as well have had the skull-and-crossbones poison symbol on them. 

The sleeping quarters were jammed full of bunks with narrow walkways between them, clothing and towels piled up all over the place. The crowding looked like something you might have seen in a picture of an East Side tenement from 1900. Or a bunk house in an old cowboy movie. Or from the sort of place that a ton of illegal immigrants jam into so they can send every spare penny they make home.

If that electrical panel had sparked, this place could have blown sky high.

I suppose that if you're young, and in real life you live somewhere else, and just need a place to conk in Boston a couple of days a week, for a few hours at a time, and you want to save your per diem (assuming you get one) for something more fun than paying rent on a nice shared flat, well...

And flight attendants are, after all, used to being in cramped communal situations, sitting in the back of a plane strapped into what looks like pretty uncomfortable pull down seats. So maybe being in the top bunk in a bunkroom ain't all that bad. Maybe you're just so tired of breathing the stale plane air, and having to deal with drunk passengers who don't want to wear that strangling mask, that you're dead asleep before your head hits the pillow.

Still...

This situation has been going on for quite a while.

“From my understanding they’ve been operating for about 10 years there, so they went under the radar for quite a while,” said Flavio Daveiga of Boston Inspectional Services. “They’re just using it as a resting point like refresh and then continuing on to their trips or their commute back to their home base.” (Source: CBS Local)

So the good news is that the flight attendants maybe aren't actually living living there. Just hanging out. But what a lousy place to hang out. (Where do the pilots crash, I wonder.)

I do get the need for a refresh. Years ago, my husband and I flew to Prague, with a seven-hour layover in Frankfurt after an overnight flight from Boston. We weren't looking forward to the idea of spending those seven hours in a stupor in the terminal, and as we were standing there not looking forward, one of us looked forward and saw a Sheraton Hotel right across from the terminal's entrance. 

We walked over and asked if we could rent a room for a few hours. 

Indeed we could.

We had a nice breakfast, a nice nap, and a nice shower, and made it to Prague fully refreshed and ready to roll.

So I get it.

Some are pointing to this airline crash pad as just another example of what-do-you-expect from Boston's general high-rent, low-availability market. (And, yes, there are the inevitable calls for rent control.) Others are using it to make a plausible argument that someone (the airlines? the city? the airlines and the city?) should put up airline industry specific housing, near the airport, where crew members can crash for a while. 

I'm just relieved that nothing bad came of this terrible living situation. And wondering how many other garden spots there are like this, where poor folks double, triple, quadruple up in "converted" basements, attics, and garages, under terrible conditions. 

While I don't think this is an argument for rent control - I just don't think it works - it sure is an argument for more affordable housing. 

And you thought your college dorm or first cruddy apartment was as bad as it gets.