Study 186: Suspended Custody: What the Rent on a Storage Unit Is Actually Buying

The United States holds roughly two billion square feet of rented self storage across some fifty three thousand facilities. This study argues that the rent is not the price of space but the price of deferral, and that self storage is the only place in the economy where the cost of not deciding about an object is denominated, dated and recorded as a payment history. It describes the condition of a stored object as suspended custody, owned but unused, kept but unseen, paid for continuously and providing nothing, which is the exact inverse of the relationship the Custodian's Contract asks for. It