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
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.
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?
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.
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
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.
ugh, this is dysphorian THIS IS NOT FUCKING NORMAL. THIS IS LATE STAGE CAPITALISM
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.
“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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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
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.
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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.
$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.
Crush this trend, now.
“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?
9 roommates*
Oh yeah, Shit the photo was cropped how I viewed, I was optimistic that the under bed area was a work area or desk or something
It must smell so horrible in there, with all those brands (farts) mixing together.
Sorry - I mean like a roommate in a college dorm, wherein you share a room. Because there’s approximately zero change that one could find a private room to rent in SF for $700 or less.
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.
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.
As someone who’s not American and had a couple of job opportunities to move to San Francisco, I’m glad not to have done it.
What kind of hellhole is that city? I had an impression it was extremely expensive but also very wealthy. The more I hear the worse it seems.
I like the city but it’s not for everyone. I definitely wouldn’t call it a hellhole.
had an impression it was extremely expensive but also very wealthy.
The trouble with these kinds of statements is that there are always going to be “bottom of the ladder” workers who are still poor in these cities, and being poor in am expensive city is a shit load worse than being poor anywhere else
Even then, salaries are high, but the CoL more or less cancels it out. Even the wealthy SWEs I know who live in SF are barely able to swing 2 bedroom apartments that they share with an SO. That’s why you hear about new grads making $200k/year right out of college working for Meta or Google, it’s true, but you’d be better off in a lot of ways working for a small company in Sacramento for $100k
What kind of hellhole is that city? I had an impression it was extremely expensive but also very wealthy. The more I hear the worse it seems.
LOL start reading about Dubai sometime.
Dubai is much cheaper
And much worse.
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San Francisco is one of the most beautiful cities in the world. And these tech bro pods, which are not really a thing here unlike in Japan where it’s been a thing for a long time, are a gimmicky joke.
You would get more space and a better place to live in a nicer neighborhood for a similar price if you simply got roommates here. It might be $900 rather than $700 but if you were sharing a bedroom, which would STILL give you more space than these pods, you could easily get down to below $700. These things are preying on tech kids out of college who only know dorm-style life and have been hired into the new AI startups.
You definitely should have done it for the resume and networking boost. San Francisco is expensive but you can definitely find deals the more you look for them. Plus the Bay Area is bigger than just San Francisco.
And regarding the other comment, $200K in SF is definitely better than $100K in Sacramento. More money is always better, unless it’s like a 10% bump. First of all, San Francisco is just more beautiful than Sacramento. Food is better. There’s more to do.
Second of all, Sacramento is getting more expensive because people are moving there from the Bay Area. It’s still cheaper, but prices are growing and you don’t live in a major city. People are paying $500K to live next to a cornfield.
Houses in my area (Ione, about an hour south ish of Sac) going for 550k or so when I bought, and again, an hour from the “big city” (sac isn’t much of a big city compared to actual metropolis but still)
California real estate is stupid. There is literal farm land right next to expensive ass homes. Building homes is like printing money.
The weather isn’t good enough to justify it, considering recent fires and the fact that you have to live in the Central Valley. Homes in hot-ass methlandia should not be that expensive.
It’s expensive because of the concentration of wealth, not the quality of the area. There’s a ton of crime, homelessness, car break ins, etc.
People often leave their car doors unlocked or their windows down to prevent their windows from being broken, but instead they find random people sleeping in their cars.
On the plus side, the weather there is quite nice.
A lot of problems coming together.
Nature is one, they’re warm year round so a lot of homeless folk are better off there.
Earthquakes prevent them from building tall. The surrounding hills make sprawl hard. Both the earth quakes and hills restrict the supply of housing.
And thats before you even start the leftist policies.
$700 a month?!
