Submitted 1 year ago by L4s@lemmy.world [bot] to technology@lemmy.world
https://www.businessinsider.com/san-francisco-tiny-bed-pods-tech-not-up-to-code-2023-10
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, 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.
revolution time!
Yea, in my city (where owning your apartment was pretty much impossible until 20th century), people rented out corners inside normal apartments.
No. This is actually perfectly normal and has been throughout history.
This is a flophouse/hostel/barracks by another name. The concept of these largely predate (modern) capitalism and they are still a very popular model in a lot of high population density cities.
The relative cost and code violations… also just speak to the relative cost of housing. Which is “normal” capitalism.
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.
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.
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. But 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.
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
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, which is something that doesn’t exist in the US.
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.
Well, neither are these, but people are using them that way.
But housing in japan isnt that expensive compared to the US.
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
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.
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.
Gotta love that if you have enough money you can just do the thing you want to do, and if it’s illegal the government will simply ask you nicely to fix it later, maybe even fine you an amount of money that’s at least on order of magnitude lower than the profits you made from it.
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 legar 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 = $23.33 a day to sleep in a wood box… brilliant!
And when your are done, you get to sleep in one for free.
lol someone has never bought a coffin and it shows.
Dying isn’t free either
You wish it was free, not on your life bud.
One of the other articles linked has a photo of the common room.
sfexaminer.com/…/article_a8459fe2-62ec-11ee-acab-…
This is a dormitory style shared living space with living area and bathrooms / shower. The “boxes” are bunks for sleeping and actually roomy and private compared to every other dorm bunk I’ve ever seen.
This is the dumbest thing I’ve seen in a while
As a person who worked at one of these cool tech companies that provided food for breakfast lunch and dinner and snacks 24/7, I found I was only using my apartment to sleep. Most of the offices of other amenities such as a gym, and all the tech workers would go out for happy hours. If I was single this would be a very valid option. Some people don’t plan to spend time in their apartments.
I never understood that whole tech/startup culture. I would absolutely hate for my entire life to be my job. And from the outside all these “cool” perks are very clearly designed to get you to spend as much time working as possible. No thanks.
Having worked at, and co-founded, multiple startups over a period of 28 years: Sure. But why are you choosing that?
The reality is that the moment I started standing up to employers or investors and expecting decent standards, they folded and I was able to have a good work-life balance and get paid market rates and still get to work on cool startups and get shares.
These companies prey on most people never thinking to negotiate (and having been on the other side of the table, and tried to be decent: most people never negotiate, even though we almost always have space to do so)
Are 700$ really not that much? Sounds like a lot for a bed
What happens if you lose your job?
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
“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 change 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.
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.
San Francisco is one of the most beautiful cities in the world. And these tech bro pods, which aren not really a thing here, unlike in Japan where it’s been a thing for a long time.
You would get more space and a better place to live Ina 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.
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.
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)
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.
They write “tech workers” but it’s pronounced “tech slaves”
$700/mo is $23/night. Capsule hotels in Tokyo are about $30/night.
You get more space and amenities in prison. And much cheaper.
$700 a month?!
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.
Skipping permits is a way of life in SF. (I had work conversations about buying older gromex so the dates were before you purchased in case am inspector noticed. Inspectors were prohibited from noticing anything they were not specifically there for.)
I wondered at the specific permit they missed.
without a permit changing the building from a bank to a living space and illegally converting a toilet into a shower.
That seems important to do properly.
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.
A boring dystopia
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.
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.
The real dystopia here is San Francisco outlawing using your land how you want.
Lol this reminds me of the scene in The Complete Al from the 80s where Weird Al travels to Japan and stays in one of their hotels:
Those would be fucking coffin homes in China What
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Tiny sleeping “pods,” which have proved a hit with San Francisco’s tech community, are not up to code, city officials said.
Representatives for the San Francisco Department of Building Inspection did not immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment, made outside normal working hours.
The pods, which are 4-foot-high boxes constructed from wood and steel, made headlines after tech workers praised the spaces in interviews with ABC 7 News.
Brownstone CEO James Stallworth told SFGate the company had a lot of inquiries from people interested in artificial intelligence.
Earlier this month, Christian Lewis, a tech-startup founder, posted photos of his experience in one of the pods on X, formerly known as Twitter.
i’m just trying to stay within the city of San Francisco without paying $4,000 a month or getting stabbed, and i think this is a great solution so far," he wrote.
The original article contains 281 words, the summary contains 143 words. Saved 49%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
So long as they get an actual factual address, then it’s a good deal.
J12@lemmy.world 1 year ago
$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.
themurphy@lemmy.world 1 year ago
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.
Pyr_Pressure@lemmy.ca 1 year ago
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.
J12@lemmy.world 1 year ago
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
Lyrl@lemm.ee 1 year ago
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.
books@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I mean you pay 700 dollars a month not to have to live next to people who can only afford 50.
ZombieTheZombieCat@lemm.ee 1 year ago
What a gross comment
J12@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Hell, under my plan $700 will at least get you a walk in closet sized living box with a mini fridge.
DudeDudenson@lemmings.world 1 year ago
Look up how much parking costs in SF lol
HurlingDurling@lemm.ee 1 year ago
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.
triclops6@lemmy.ca 1 year ago
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.
wildginger@lemmy.myserv.one 1 year ago
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!”