San Francisco says tiny sleeping ‘pods,’ which cost $700 a month and became a big hit with tech workers, are not up to code::The pods, which are 4-foot-high boxes constructed from wood and steel, made headlines after tech workers praised the spaces.
Ugh. Bougie homeless. Just sleep in your car like normal people. 🙄 /s
I do want sleep pods at airports.
Shower pod at the Paris airport was the best layover I’ve ever had. You pay in 30 minute increments but so nice to get refreshed when you’re traveling across the Atlantic.
Wow, 30min is really generous.
I bet that was really nice. 🙂 As someone who takes red eyes, showering when I get there would be preferred.
I would have a thirty minute shower than.
San Franciscan here. What is “car?”
A mobile home. Don’t worry you’ll be able to rent one from Uber for the night soon enough.
Well in San Francisco, a car is something that a robot learns how to navigate around the city streets.
All of our robots just sit in the middle of intersections. What are these navigating robots you speak of?
They’re the big boxes in the road with broken windows
But that’s not important right now
They’re things on the road that take you to your abode.
$700 for this is insane. I get why they’re doing it but there’s no reason anyone should pay $700 for a bed.
San Francisco should build their own get that shit up to code, make it about 30 stories, have spots for restaurants, stores, retail at the bottom and make it actually affordable and for everyone. There should be no market for 700 a month 4 foot tall boxes. Greedy fucks.
Shit should be like $50 a month max and yea it’s dystopian AF but if people want to do it I guess whatever. Just don’t rip them off.
but if people want to do it I guess whatever.
They don’t want it. They need to do it. There’s no choice here. Alternative is to not have a job in your field, because you have to move 300km away to afford something.
Just what is shown in the photo would get you $7000 a month… why rent out 2-3 houses when you can rent out 10 boxes I guess.
Yep, there’s a market for it so of course the landlords will do it. Housing and rent prices in this country just sickens me but this is some next level shit
With a housing shortage, say 10 people needing a place to live in this space, renting 2-3 houses leaves 7-8 people homeless. Making progress can’t be just a rejection of sub(sub)standard solutions, it has to also be building acceptable but dense housing.
And then with all the rampant corruption it would turn into a overpriced slum. Yes I’m pessimistic, and I hope I can be proven wrong and that your idea would happen.
Look up how much parking costs in SF lol
I mean you pay 700 dollars a month not to have to live next to people who can only afford 50.
What a gross comment
Sorry that came across as rude, but I assume that is definitely some people’s mindset.
I wasn’t advocating for it.
Hell, under my plan $700 will at least get you a walk in closet sized living box with a mini fridge.
I could live in a place that big and be happy, I think, as long as the bathrooms were clean and I had easy access to food.
I lived in a YMCA for a while. I had a very small room with a bed, a small dresser, and a kitchen chair. You couldn’t sit on the chair of the door was open. I had no fridge so I would keep things on my window sill outside (it was late Fall) but crows kept stealing the food. Worked well for drinks.
The bathrooms weren’t great but I was a breakfast cook going in at 4:30am so I was living opposite other people.
I heard crazy stuff in there. There was a guy who was really mentally ill and prone to raging out. One night he was storming up and down the hall yelling “this isn’t a hallway, it’s a trap!” over and over. That was scary. Other crazy stuff happened because a bunch of other people were staying in two rooms and were really into coke or something (this was a long time ago) and they’d come home after last call, run out of coke, and start arguing over who was holding out, who had had more than their share, did anyone have money, etc. Sometimes they would fight.
I was only there for about six weeks before I found a better place but it kept me from being homeless after I had to move out of a place with one day notice (hotel employee residence, my roommate had an opposite shift to me and had been violating rules left and right and getting written up so the evicted us both with very little warning). Anyway, I was lucky to get in there, I couldn’t afford an apartment. I eventually was able to explain to the hotel security that I had no idea what was going on and signed a paper saying I was out on the first infraction and got back into residence.
Good times.
Ok hot take, this is a perfectly valid move, 700 for location and a box to sleep in is a welcome option for many renters in the city. If there are shared spaces like kitchen baths etc this works.
If you want your own space, ok, this isn’t for you, but this alleviates a ton of rental demand which could lower rents in aggregate if enough of these are built!
The alternative is your whole paycheck goes to rent and you retire a week before death, i’d be all for this if I were single.
Is someone making a profit? Most definitely, but I get a better option to run my career in the city, I’m down. Not only that, I hope this model picks up so more people can have the option.
My gripe here is the city, bitching about no windows when this is a pretty tangible solution to many renter’s problems. Either fix it yourself or get out the way when others are addressing it.
Edit: lots of group think and virtue signalling here. If these aren’t there you don’t even have the choice, it’s 5k rent or move away from the city. That’s not bootlicking that’s fact. Whining about landlords being greedy isn’t a solution, and this is.
You sound like the guy who founded a company to kill himself next to the wreckage of a really old ship.
“That damned city, bitching about safety regulations! They need to just get out of the way of innovation!”
ugh, this is dysphorian THIS IS NOT FUCKING NORMAL. THIS IS LATE STAGE CAPITALISM
Late stage capitalism? They were doing shit like this in the 1800s. It IS capitalism.
Like, seriously. It’s always been a thing.
In the 1800s, you could rent a space on a rope overnight so that you could drape yourself over it and have a place to sleep that night that wasn’t on the freezing, urine-soaked ground.
This has long been an issue.
Holy balls. That was a wild read.
revolution time!
Yea, in my city (where owning your apartment was pretty much impossible until 20th century), people rented out corners inside normal apartments.
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Speaking of the relative cost of housing, you can buy an actual whole house in other parts of the USA for that much a month. That could be a 30-year mortgage payment on a 100k house.
In San Francisco/Bay Area that doesn’t even cover a parking space per month.
In the US, the average home price sold was $495k. Where can you find a $100k house that doesn’t need a tear down or complete renovation?
In the rural parts of the USA they are all over the place. Here is a 5-bedroom house for $95k in Illinois: https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/417-W-Illinois-St-Steeleville-IL-62288/119741473_zpid/
My first house was a 3 bedroom, 2 bath in rural Texas for 5k more than that. That was 14 years ago. I just looked it up and it’s currently $130k. It was built in the 90s, is brick, and still looks pretty good.
So… your solution is to buy a house hundreds of miles away from their job?
Nope, I simply answered their question: “In the US, the average home price sold was $495k. Where can you find a $100k house that doesn’t need a tear down or complete renovation?”
My guy that is a 1900 built House. That is an immediate teardown on purchase.
What? Just because a house is old, doesn’t mean it isn’t still habitable. If a house that old is still standing and in good condition chances are it’s built better than new builds. And by the pictures, previous owners have taken a lot of care in it and upgraded it. Sure, the cosmetics may need to change depending on your preferences, but there is nothing wrong with that house structurally.
I really like how confidently you are wrong.
Did you look at it? That is not a tear down.
Ok obligatory fuck late stage capitalism. That said, hot take, this is a perfectly valid move, 700 for location and a box to sleep in is a welcome option for many renters in the city. If there are shared spaces like kitchen baths etc this works.
If you want your own space, ok, this isn’t for you, but this alleviates a ton of rental demand which could lower rents in aggregate if enough of these are built!
The alternative is your whole paycheck goes to rent and you retire a week before death, i’d be all for this if I were single.
Is someone making a profit? Most definitely, but I get a better option to run my career in the city, I’m down. Not only that, I hope this model picks up so more people can have the option.
My gripe here is the city, bitching about no windows when this is a pretty tangible solution to many renter’s problems. Either fix it yourself or get out the way when others are addressing it.
This kid must be like 17-18 and has seen none of the world. This would be luxury to half the planet.
half the planet lmao, no. Secondly you can point at the US why it’s so bad in those countries too
This is a dormitory with a shared living space, bathrooms and shower. If anything the “bunks” are quite generously sized.
Take a look at your comment and ask if maybe you’re flipping out unnecessarily.
ugh, this is dysphorian THIS IS NOT FUCKING NORMAL. THIS IS LATE STAGE CAPITALISM
“A big hit” with people who desperately need accommodation that won’t bankrupt them.
Yeah i love how every negative was couched within a sentence mentioning how popular and great these pieces of shit are
“And there’s really cool people here!”
Get me a bucket, I’m gonna fucking puke.
A pod for sleeping at home: 👍 A pod for sleeping in a hotel: 👍 A pod to rent for cheap on vacation: 👍
A pod is your fucking home: 👎👎👎👎👎👎👎👎👎👎
I imagine this is more like the Japanese coffin hotels. They are for salary men that work too late to take the trains home.
In this case, probably for people who don’t want to do the 1-1.5hr each way to their “just affordable enough” commutter home every day. I doubt these are many people’s long term permanent address.
$700/mo is excessive though.
It’s actually an entire shared living space with a common room, bathrooms, and shower. Not comparable to coffin hotels which are not for extended living. You could absolutely live in these long term. It’s essentially a dormitory. Tech workers fresh out of college probably adapt to them just great. You can’t live anywhere else in SF for $700 and you don’t live in the City to stay home anyway. People living in these spend their time working at lavish offices and going out partying and wining and dining. This is a place to crash, and not even a bad one.
Yay a in city version of a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bunkhouse Or a western version of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communal_apartment Or a adult/non criminal (for now) version of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workhouse
This sort of thing is not new and generally not a flex on the state of things.
The people here are bagging multiple six figures and the reason they are willing to sleep in a crash pad is they spend their waking hours in a luxury office or out at bars and restaurants. That’s just city life. Not the damn debtor’s workhouse. I’m amazed at the hysterics people are showing over this. Save your outrage for something that matters.
Like better city planing and the expectation of reasonable shelter for $700 a month?
The housing situation can absolutely be improved. But seriously: this is an improvement. Do you know how many $700 options there are in San Francisco? Try none. I paid $550 for a room in a flat last time I lived there - in 1998
Cities should utilize high density housing styles. Shared living is one of those. But I understand that people paying $700 a month for a house with a backyard and garage - in Missouri - will naturally look at this price tag and think it’s robbery. On the other hand, these tech workers are making $500k much of the time.
Yeah I laugh every time someone calls shit like this dystopian. I’m like ok so in one breath ppl like that claim this is hellish and in the next talk about how the only solution to housing shortages are housing density. Wtf do they think this is???
Furthermore this is nothing compared to living in hong Kong.
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I remember reading about, “pod hotels” in Akiharbara, “Electric Town”, Japan in the late 90s or early 2000s. I recall them being marketed as a cheap way to see the neighborhood. Even back then, Akiharbara was the global epicenter of anime/manga, retro gaming, arcades, computer stores and repair shops.
Glad to see the concept has now evolved to, “dystopian hell” some 20 years later.
yeah, to be clear: capsule hotels in japan are not meant to be long term stays, they’re for busy business people that need a quick place to sleep for ONE night because they worked till late at night and missed the last train, or similar situations like that. Nobody actually lives in a capsule hotel
EDIT: to clarify, some people may live in a capsule hotel, but they’re not designed for long-term living
There have to be people living in capsule hotels in Japan. There are people in Japan living in computer cafes, where the lights are on 24/7. Japan isn’t all sunshine and roses. Tons of people barely hanging on and these cheap ass places let them have at least some sort of dignity. If you work any job in Japan, odds are you’ll have a roof over your head. Same can’t be said in the US, where many homeless people have jobs and can’t afford to be protected from the elements.
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Nobody actually lives in a capsule hotel
I mean.
It’s really sad that someone had the thought process of, “I bet we can convince people to live in these fucking things”. An despite this small bump in the road, it is seemingly working.
It’s disgusting how many people will leverage housing costs (especially in San Francisco) against their fellow (hu)man.
And living this way isn’t new there, either, it’s an “evolution”.
I can recall a story over a decade ago about google employees renting uhaul trucks to live in, parked on the google campus parking lots. The same article also followed some engineers who were illegally living in rent-a-storage spaces.
So compared to that, it makes these pods look like luxury living, even though they’re all pretty depraved.
Being a software dev myself, I’ll gladly take a lower salary in a low cost-of-living city if it means I can own a house (and not be mortgage poor, either).
All valid points. Thanks for mentioning, “mortgage poor”. It’s amazing how many people think that’s the solution to rent…when you’re typically agreeing to pay, essentially rent, for 30 years.
An everyone who gets a mortgage, with rare exception, OF COURSE, believes it will be paid off well before they are anywhere near 30 years. Seemingly forgetting that health issues, social issues, weather events, etc are likely going to stop that from happening.
This post just keeps getting more bleak, lol…
The advantage is it’s usually cheaper than rent, and you don’t have a landLORD to come and harass you or deny maintenance requests. Of course, people managed to fuck it up with HOAs though.
Yeah, I love looking at homes or lots of land for sale (rarely, for is depressing, ha), find something appealing (though generally still unaffordable), proceed to search for the address and wham-o! - HOA with monthly to annual fee. Plus bonus stipulations of what you can/cannot do to both the interior/exterior.
30 years of payments. Mostly consistent, during that time, the money is going towards paying off the loan of an asset and building equity. In the long term, I’ll have something to show for the money I spent. 30 years of rent, on the other hand, and I’ll still be renting.
If I decide to move, or something comes up, I have an asset I can leverage. Or I can sell the house, pay off the mortgage and have cash to use for rentals or a new house.
It comes with a lot more responsibility though. It’s on me to maintain the house, upgrade, fix, landscape, etc. That’s where a ton of money goes to keep the value of the house. I also have more liability. If something happens, that’s my house that could burn down or flood. Then I’d be screwed. Or if I were to get sued, that’s an asset that would be used to settle that.
There is no mistaking that 30 years is likely the minimum time to make payments. Those super lucky might put extra money into it early. But there is also a good chance people take a second mortgage or refinance and extend the mortgage with lower payments at some point.
But even with that, it’s still a more sound investment for those that want a house than renting a house.
I did my internship in San Jose. Even back then it made sense. The cost was insane and from what I am reading has more than doubled since that point. I knew three interns staying in a single cheap motel together.
They need to finally start building.
I’ve stayed in one in Osaka. You don’t have access to clothes or belongings during your stay. It’s a lot like staying on a space ship without the travel.
Well, neither are these, but people are using them that way.
But housing in japan isnt that expensive compared to the US.
yeah seriously, I looked at rent prices in chicago and what you can get for 1000 dollars in tokyo in a decent area not too far away from the city you can pay 3000 for in chicago, in most places and if you go to kawasaki or something make it 500.
Be warned tho, one thing that sucks about renting in japan is the initial costs, you’re basically expected to pay 6-9 months rent in advance (“key money” + “agency fee” + “guarantor fee” + deposit) when you rent and if you move you only get the deposit back (usually 1 to 2 months) which is bullshit.
Centered in the square carpet of green plastic turf, a Japanese teenager sat behind a C-shaped console, reading a textbook. The white fiberglass coffins were racked in a framework of industrial scaffolding. Six tiers of coffins, ten coffins on a side. Case nodded in the boy’s direction and limped across the plastic grass to the nearest ladder. The compound was roofed with cheap laminated matting that rattled in a strong wind and leaked when it rained, but the coffins were reasonably difficult to open without a key.
The expansion-grate catwalk vibrated with his weight as he edged his way along the third tier to Number 92. The coffins were three meters long, the oval hatches a meter wide and just under a meter and a half tall.
– William Gibson, Neuromancer
Cyberpunk was supposed to be a dystopian vision.
Most dystopian books are now used as a manual for some politicians and rich a**holes.
Ready Player One was a dystopia and Zuck was so enamored it became required reading for building the “Metaverse”.
Billions of dollars can’t buy you the ability to sense irony I guess.
hands book to new hire “Make this in 2 years…there’s red bull in the fridge. You sleep on that mat.”
You sleep on that mat.
Dunno if better or worse than a pod.
soon the window will go, then the other conforts
Don’t get me wrong, I would LOVE to see modern SRO-style buildings, noise proofed, with small individual bathrooms and kitchenettes. That sort of development would be a godsend to the housing shortage, perfect for young people, supercommuters, and recent transplants, as well as for stopgap homeless prevention.
This isn’t that. This is horrible.
Yeah young people(students) fresh out on their own and have nothing yet trying to make ends meet don’t have standards yet when they first get out into the world and once they run into responsibilities they find out fast this type of living really isn’t living. It’s actually super limited. Until then: extorters are going to extort.
But how is this supposed to happen in high-density cities like NYC or SF?
I don’t have any answers, but as someone who lived in SF for 7 years back in the 90s and early oughts as a student, I know for a fact that “there are no simple solutions for the problems that we face.”
Yeah, I just quoted a DRI song; guilty as charged!
I know. It’s difficult. It would require changes to coding for square footage requirements. It might not be particularly profitable. It’d be expensive to run safely. The opportunity costs would be astronomical (considering the luxury-condo alternative).
It wouldn’t be the solution, because no one thing is. However, It would be a solution to a narrow set of problems, and an asset to residents and workers if it were managed and secured properly. I think one key would be ensuring that it didn’t become a shelter for the vagrant homeless population, nor a place for families, just a relatively inexpensive, clean, safe option for individuals to land for a while.
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I agree there’s a problem with corporations and wealthy people treating fines as a mere cost of doing business, but in situations where there was neither malicious intent nor actual harm, it’s problematic to create a legal minefield with harsh penalties. The goal of regulation should be to gain compliance rather than punish trivial noncompliance. Of course one might argue that something that does no harm ought not be forbidden at all.
For a case as benign as this that makes a lot of sense but the attitude of entitlement to projects that generate capital is wild, and not doing something as simple as getting the building permits before you start building is really emblematic of that.
Crush this trend, now.
$700 / 30 = $23.33 a day to sleep in a wood box… brilliant!
And when your are done, you get to sleep in one for free.
lol someone has never bought a coffin and it shows.
Just throw me in the trash
Yes, you are right. But no way in hell am I going to pay for my own coffin.
That’s what you think.
You can’t take that money with ya!
I won’t leave any, ha.
What happens to bodies that can’t pay burial or cremation costs? Do they just get thrown into a compost bin?
In most cases, local governments use direct cremation to dispose of unclaimed bodies and the cremains are stored for a set period of time. After being stored the cremains may be scattered. The Cremation Society of North America has estimated that there are currently 2 million unclaimed cremated remains in the U.S.
Some counties elect to bury unclaimed bodies. Typically, the body is buried in an unmarked grave that is county-owned. If a family member later comes forward the body may be exhumed upon request.
Other states allow for unclaimed bodies to be donated for medical science. There are also state laws that allow for the unclaimed bodies of veterans to be buried by third party groups.
Source: Direct Cremation
This is for unclaimed bodies, if your body is claimed by your family then the cost is taken out of your estate or your family have to pay for it.
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You wish it was free, not on your life bud.
Dying isn’t free either
One of the other articles linked has a photo of the common room.
This is a dormitory style shared living space with living area and bathrooms / shower. The “boxes” are bunks for sleeping and actually roomy and private compared to every other dorm bunk I’ve ever seen.
This is the dumbest thing I’ve seen in a while
As a person who worked at one of these cool tech companies that provided food for breakfast lunch and dinner and snacks 24/7, I found I was only using my apartment to sleep. Most of the offices of other amenities such as a gym, and all the tech workers would go out for happy hours. If I was single this would be a very valid option. Some people don’t plan to spend time in their apartments.
I never understood that whole tech/startup culture. I would absolutely hate for my entire life to be my job. And from the outside all these “cool” perks are very clearly designed to get you to spend as much time working as possible. No thanks.
I worked normally hour, I just didn’t need a full apartment. You going to start your work day there’s breakfast you work there’s lunch you work until 5:00 and then you go to the gym and then you go back for dinner when you do something cool in the city. I actually have really fond memories of that period.
I’m glad it worked out for you. And I also know that my idea of it all can’t possibly apply to every single company that was or is a part of that whole culture.
I just find myself sceptical of it all since I much prefer to have my own time, and my own space as separate from work and the people I work with. And perks like that just very clearly seem designed to get me to spend as much time at work as possible.
I really think that it started as real perks to attract a lot of talent, and slowly got morphed and abused into a way to siphon minutes out of employees lives.
It kind of started when Google, Apple and others started colluding to keep wages low by refusing to hire each other’s talent. They’ve been found guilty of that and I got a nice check of about 10$ plus a pinky promise they wouldn’t do it again. Yeah!
It started before that. In '98 I remember having dinner with someone who worked at Netscape before then who told me about how a co-worker had just been fired for living in the office, something they’d apparently decided to do in the first place because they already then had all of these perks designed to keep them in the office.
The Google, Apple etc. collusion certainly was a huge step up in abusive practices, though.
For what it’s worth, I’m an engineer and my experience is the complete opposite, it’s a super chill job and I have all the free time I could possibly want.
I guess it depends on what job you look for.
Having worked at, and co-founded, multiple startups over a period of 28 years: Sure. But why are you choosing that?
The reality is that the moment I started standing up to employers or investors and expecting decent standards, they folded and I was able to have a good work-life balance and get paid market rates and still get to work on cool startups and get shares.
These companies prey on most people never thinking to negotiate (and having been on the other side of the table, and tried to be decent: most people never negotiate, even though we almost always have space to do so)
Are 700$ really not that much? Sounds like a lot for a bed
These people are making $80k at the very bottom, $120-200k is typical. Keep in mind they are paying 40% in income taxes alone (federal, state, social security, Medicare). When rent is $3-4k for a room you just sleep in, $700 for a smaller room is a nice savings.
80k minimum? I feel so Europoor.
Actually… 5 weeks of holiday, mostly free healthcare, good public transport, a mostly functioning democracy 🤔 Maybe not that poor. Still can’t afford a house 😭
This is a California city. The rest of the US is not so nuts. And it’s funny you mention socialist benefits. CA is the most socialist state and it’s a giant shit hole for most people.
What happens if you lose your job?
Sign up for the next up and coming tech start up company
The excuse by the residents as to why this is ok is certainly that.
How dumb do you have to be to complain about how much living in the city costs while paying almost a thousand a month to live in a closet… You. You’re the reason it’s expensive and why housing isn’t a priority. You have to stop buying this dumb shit to solve the issue and let’s be honest if you’re paying 700 to live in a closet and praise it’s networking chances you aren’t unable to move.
You do realize a 500 sq ft studio apartment may run $2000/mo or more in that same area right? It’s one of the most expensive places to live in the US
That’s the problem, and this is not a reasonable solution.
I think the solution is to move somewhere cheaper with fast Internet.
I don’t argue that there aren’t any better solutions, but SF is on a peninsula (called Yerba Buena if anyone cares) and is already the 2nd most densely populated city in the US, which is just to say that it’s a limited space without a lot of options for housing short of building in more density.
“Became a big hit with tech workers” lmao that’s fucking stupid. There’s just nowhere to live that’s remotely reasonably priced in SF. This is like one of the only choices if you really don’t want a roommate.
The header photo suggests at least 4 room mates tho?
Sorry - I mean like a roommate in a college dorm, wherein you share a room. Because there’s approximately zero chance that one could find a private room to rent in SF for $700 or less.
Who had William Gibson’s coffins on their Cyberpunk Bingo?
Spoiler: They appeared in Japan in the late 80s in hotels, rented a day at a time.
Is this from Neuromancer per chance? I own the book and never read it.
I do not want to acknowledge how long I have owned it though, lol. It is crazy how things can end up backlogged.
Yes. In the beginning of the book, down-on-his-luck Case is sleeping in a rental coffin since it’s all he can afford for accommodations.
That’s super interesting (given the post context).
I’m going to have to knock this out already then, I’m off work for a week. If I can finish The Hobbit in a day, I can do the same here!
Thank you for the response, I’ll try and report back if I actually keep up my current motivation.
Tech companies that offer places to sleep, eat and play at work, only do so so they can keep you working as long as a possible. If you never leave the office they make boatloads of money and make yourself a free Eggo waffle. And if you try to work from home so you can live in a city you can actually afford, they make come into the office so it’s impossible. Not because you aren’t doing good work at home, but because you can’t won’t 24/7 at home.
