1y ago

Techies are paying $700 a month for tiny bed ‘pods’ in downtown San Francisco

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Techies are paying $700 a month for tiny bed ‘pods’ in downtown San Francisco::px-captcha

A Boring Dystopia @lemmy.world

Techies are paying $700 a month for tiny bed 'pods' in downtown San Francisco

www.sfgate.com /tech/article/rent-bed-pods-downtown-techies-18388110.php

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It's funny to me how many of the things we were told communism would bring about are now being experienced under the current economic system.
- But that's obviously because of the socialist elements left in the system. /s

The USA is better than this. We should not be forcing people to live in tiny little dorms to work in our tech hubs due to housing costs. Build more apartments, fund it through corporate taxes and actually make San Francisco affordable for our brightest tech workers.
- Tech workers shouldn't be working from an onsite location unless they're touching hardware...there shouldn't be a central location they're all at anyways.
  
  I don't know about shouldn't. I think that there should always be the option to work remotely, but I much prefer to work in an office where I can have a separate mental space from home and be able to build meaningful relationships with my coworkers.
  
  I would love to see incentives to have people work from home in towns that need the population. I think a lot of people would like to live somewhere more rural if they didn't have to commute... but we would need to fix public transportation if we did that. Otherwise we're just adding more cars and miles.
  
  Agreed.
  
  Not everyone works well remote. I much prefer a hybrid model and honestly wouldn’t even consider working somewhere that’s 100% WFH. All that WFH does for me is decrease how much work I get done and make every waking moment in my home feel like work because I live in a 1 bedroom apartment.
  
  Wouldn't it be incredible if smaller tech companies spread out a bit? There are plenty of small towns in America that could use any form of industry to keep them alive.
- History suggests that the USA really isn't better than this. If you ignore the post WWII boom period, workers being treated terribly is the norm.
  
  Well, no. Im not going to ignore the last 80 years. Of course progress takes time and future-looking we can still do much better. We have the means, we have the land, we have the know how.
- Part of the housing problem: https://youtu.be/CCOdQsZa15o?si=zupttseljqhz07RO
  
  Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
  https://youtu.be/CCOdQsZa15o?si=zupttseljqhz07RO
  Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
  I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.

This is just a shittier capsule hotel like they have in Japan. At least there they don’t charge you an arm and a leg for it.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capsule_hotel
- Wikipedia article puts the pricing in Japan between 18 to 36 USD per night. That's a range between 540 to 1080 USD per month. That makes San Francisco pricing average.
  
  You can't really compare a per night pricing to a per month pricing. Per month is always cheaper that per night but you loose the flexibility.
  Anyway the price difference makes sense because SF housing is more expensive than Tokyo.
  
  Ooh good call! I was misremembering the price!
- They have much better standard, they have a door you can close, not just some curtains, the SF one is like a hostel.
  
  Some have curtains in Japan as well.

I don't dislike the idea of people living in dormitories, but with a price of $700 it seems that should have a full height room.
- Can't even stand up to get dressed in one of these

Can't they work remotely? Why live in downtown SF? Seems like a waste of money.
These look little more luxurious than the low-income housing in Beijing.
- Return to work is all about keeping money in the financial district.

Rather a converted van, cheaper and serves two purposes as can guarantee that $700 does not include parking.
- Presumably part of the draw for living in downtown San Francisco is you don’t need to pay for the upkeep and feeding of a car
- Yeah but it avoids the hassle of having your home impounded for being illegally parked.

I swear I remember a location like this in one of the newer Deus Ex games, which take place in a cyberpunk ish dystopia
- In Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Adam Jensen, the game's protagonist, searches for a computer hacker named Van Brugen and finds him hiding out in a place called Alice Pods in Hengsha, which is essentially a "hotel" composed of coffin-like closable pods with beds in them. Each guest rents a pod and can make use of the on-site facilities. It was communal living on a shoestring budget (or in Van Brugen's case, hiding from the Pharmaceutical Megacorp trying to assassinate you).
  The funny part is that the fictional Alice Pods actually had more amenities than this real-life pod hotel does. They had washers and dryer units, private shower stalls and toilets, and even late-night food trucks in the common area serving up food.
  A cyberpunk dystopia actually wasn't dystopian enough to match reality.

Oh hellll to the no.. somebody is making a fucking killing on these idiots though!!
- Are they idiots or are they unable to find housing within budget? Not sure about their rental situation. In Toronto you find ads for half a bed that you have to share for $500cad
  
  They are idiots for staying in an area with prices that high if they aren't making enough money to make it financially feasible

$550 is the most I ever paid for a room there, but that was in 2000. My dad loves to talk about his $12 apartment on Sanchez back in 1965.

Techies?

54 comments