The pods, which are 4-foot-high boxes constructed from wood and steel, made headlines after tech workers praised the spaces.
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.
People don’t want to live in this pods for the most part. The problem is NIMBYs in San Francisco constantly block new housing from being built. This results in insane housing rental prices for workers. Because housing prices are so insane, it makes $700 sleeping pods look like a steal.
The issue is the lack of housing, NIMBYs, and the local government.
I’m so sick of the coverage on this. There is a shared living space and bathrooms and shower, so it’s essentially a dormitory. Big whoop. Actually we could use more of such shared housing.
But then we wouldn’t be able to combine our hatred of tech workers with our complaints about the economy to turn this into a horror story.
Yeah and while people are outraged at the squalor of it, they’re tech workers so no one’s actually concerned. It’s just an occasion to air one’s one bitching about the economy.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
$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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I have a friend that moved to Japan when he was in his twenties to work in a blue collar job. The pay was good, but he had to work a lot of overtime, sometimes 12, 14 hours. These jobs also often offered a place to live nearby the factory. Somehow it seems very similar to this, the difference is that he got an actual apartment and not this sad excuse for one.
One day he got sick of it all, so he started to just apply for these jobs, get free housing, and never show up to work. He could live rent free for a month, sometimes two in the time between getting fired and finally evicted. When that happened, he would move to a different city and then do it all over again.
In the meantime he was studying Japanese and doing side gigs. After doing that for awhile he landed a job as an English teacher in a school and he doesn’t have to do that anymore.
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People don’t want to live in this pods for the most part. The problem is NIMBYs in San Francisco constantly block new housing from being built. This results in insane housing rental prices for workers. Because housing prices are so insane, it makes $700 sleeping pods look like a steal.
The issue is the lack of housing, NIMBYs, and the local government.
I’m so sick of the coverage on this. There is a shared living space and bathrooms and shower, so it’s essentially a dormitory. Big whoop. Actually we could use more of such shared housing.
But then we wouldn’t be able to combine our hatred of tech workers with our complaints about the economy to turn this into a horror story.
And the people utilizing these spaces are not the ones bitching. How odd…
Yeah and while people are outraged at the squalor of it, they’re tech workers so no one’s actually concerned. It’s just an occasion to air one’s one bitching about the economy.
Ugh. Bougie homeless. Just sleep in your car like normal people. 🙄 /s
I do want sleep pods at airports.
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.
They’re things on the road that take you to your abode.
$700 / 30 = $23.33 a day to sleep in a wood box… brilliant!
One of the other articles linked has a photo of the common room.
https://www.sfexaminer.com/news/housing/sf-says-mint-plaza-building-with-700-pods-lacks-permits/article_a8459fe2-62ec-11ee-acab-bbda4eab0a5c.html
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
I like the city but it’s not for everyone. I definitely wouldn’t call it a hellhole.
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.
$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.
I mean you pay 700 dollars a month not to have to live next to people who can only afford 50.
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.
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.
– William Gibson, Neuromancer
Cyberpunk was supposed to be a dystopian vision.
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.
Crush this trend, now.
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.
You get more space and amenities in prison. And much cheaper.
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.
$700/mo is $23/night. Capsule hotels in Tokyo are about $30/night.
I have a friend that moved to Japan when he was in his twenties to work in a blue collar job. The pay was good, but he had to work a lot of overtime, sometimes 12, 14 hours. These jobs also often offered a place to live nearby the factory. Somehow it seems very similar to this, the difference is that he got an actual apartment and not this sad excuse for one.
One day he got sick of it all, so he started to just apply for these jobs, get free housing, and never show up to work. He could live rent free for a month, sometimes two in the time between getting fired and finally evicted. When that happened, he would move to a different city and then do it all over again.
In the meantime he was studying Japanese and doing side gigs. After doing that for awhile he landed a job as an English teacher in a school and he doesn’t have to do that anymore.