Ingra House

The Ingra House is a rooming house located in Anchorage, Alaska. It is a hybrid type living environment where tenants have a private furnished room but share bathrooms and kitchen areas with other rooms. The sharing of bathrooms and kitchen facilities is inductive of smaller European rooming houses, but placed on a mass quantity more commonly found in modern American hospitality. [http://www.ingrahouse.com]

History

The Ingra House started in 1985 as a combination eight-plex and duplex apartment building located on adjoining lots in downtown Anchorage. The buildings had been constructed sometime in the 1940s and had character appropriate to their age. The apartments were cramped, had outdated fixtures, and low ceilings. The buildings were a maze of hallways and apartments. The archaic building attracted blue collar tenants who often struggled to make the rent payment. The concept of a rooming house was born when two tenants rented a single unit but one roommate was always late with his rent. Frustrated with the situation, they asked the paying tenant if they could move someone else into the apartment. He answered that it would not be a problem as long the third party paid his rent. So management evicted the non-paying roommate and moved in a more reliable third party. This housing situation worked quite well for the roommates. They shared the apartment but had little interaction with one another. Rent was always paid on time which made the owners happy. This habit of aligning reliable roommate situations became a habit. Eventually the idea developed into their current business model. Gradually they started charging the roommates individual monthly rates and the roommates were no longer equally responsible for the rent being satisfied. If one paid and the other did not, then the non-paying tenant would be turned out. From that point, the owners continued to further cultivate their rooming house concept. Rather than renting each apartment out to families or roommates, they rented each room of an apartment out based on monthly rates. The renters would share the kitchen, bathroom, and living room as a common area. Each individual was responsible for his or her rent alone and was not dependent upon others to pay. A short time later the concept further developed so that daily, weekly, and monthly rates were made available. The owners labeled the building as “The Ingra House” and operated it much more successfully as a rooming house with 27 individual rooms rather than the original eight-plex and duplex that occupied the property.

Reconstruction

In 2005, the original Ingra House was demolished and a new facility was built in its same location at 641 Ingra Street.

Completed in March of 2006, the new building has 40 private rooms with 6 shared bathrooms, 3 shared kitchens, and on-site laundry facilities. Unlike the old building, the new Ingra House offers rooms available for disabled people with wheelchair ramps, handicap accessible bathrooms, and handicap modified kitchens.