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New York Women Spend Night Camping Out In Model Micro-Unit

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork/AP) -- Many New Yorkers live in small apartments. Most of them don't camp out in a micro-unit at a museum to demonstrate the virtues of small-space living.

That's what Challie Stillman and Lina Franco are doing.

The two women live in a 650-square-foot apartment in Brooklyn, but for 24 hours they are living in a model apartment half that size at the Museum of the City of New York in Manhattan.

The apartment is part of an exhibit that runs through Sept. 2 called ``Making Room: New Models for Housing New Yorkers.''

Stillman and Franco arrived at 6 p.m. Friday for their 24-hour stay.

The apartment features space-saving furniture and under-the-counter appliances.

The couple invited six friends for dinner their first night. They had food delivered.

"We wanted to see what it would be like for a night to spend it in an apartment half the size. We're a couple and also try to do the things that we would normally do on a Friday night; for example, bringing over six of our closest friends," Stillman said.

The studio was fashioned after the micro-units that are being built as part of a pilot program in Brooklyn's Navy Yard and in Kips Bay where couples or singles would otherwise be priced out.

City officials want to make the new apartments more available as long as there is a market for them.

"I would literally have to downsize because I'm a packrat. I want to hold on to anything and everything but I think it would be good if I was a single person," Charlotte Henson said.

Okay for a single person, but how would a couple make out.

"If you're a couple that likes to bicker and spend time away from each other you probably can't be here," Franco said.

For the time being Franco and Stillman plan to stay in Brooklyn.

(TM and © Copyright 2013 CBS Radio Inc. and its relevant subsidiaries. CBS RADIO and EYE Logo TM and Copyright 2013 CBS Broadcasting Inc. Used under license. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)

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