The possibility of a small studio apartment for $50k in San Francisco (2016)

https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2016/9/22/the-50000-san-francisco-studio-apartment

by simonebrunozzi • 8 years ago

54 66 8 years ago

strongtowns.org

TylerE• 8 years ago

This seems to operating in a different universe than the one I inhabit.

120 square feet is a prison cell, not a home.

beamatronic• 8 years ago

But it’s only 50k!! If your goal is to come here short term and extract wealth, it’s perfect.

anoncoward1112• 8 years ago

If I'm going for short term wealth extraction, it's either gonna be couch surfing, sleeping in cars or malls, or maybe renting a room in an apartment with like 7 other pre-existing people.

Sinking 50k into SF for a prison cell ( that for most house guests is socially unacceptable ) is a bit of a tough sell for me!

wbl• 8 years ago

I produce, you work, he extracts wealth.

pj_mukh• 8 years ago

If he can do 120 sq.ft for $50k. Can he do, 500sq ft for $210K? That sounds reasonable.

I reckon the problem here, isn't the problem of packing in homes, its land-use approvals.

anoncoward1112• 8 years ago

I've been in the home improvement biz for a long time now- the price of a house is mostly a function of proximity to high paying in person jobs, restrictive zoning from local politicians, cost of labor, and then lastly, materials.

This is why a poorly-built trailer in North Dakota's oil fields can still be 100k (instead of 20k in Maine), whereas a beautiful mansion in rural Texas can be 200k (instead of 900k in New Jersey)

hkmurakami• 8 years ago

These sorts of units exist in Hong Kong and Tokyo. In the case of Hong Kong, even highly paid junior banker / consultant types will live here because they're spending almost all their time at the office or various eating/entertainment establishments anyways.

gammateam• 8 years ago

I'll take two, thanks!

kiba• 8 years ago

So, it's not for you. But not everyone need or want rooms bigger than that.

walshemj2• 8 years ago

So where do you cook pursue hobbies you know have a life.

BugsJustFindMe4• 8 years ago

120 foot (11m2) apartments exist all over Paris. They're not great, but fine for young single people without children who don't spend all day at home.

sidlls• 8 years ago

That's the size of the master bedroom in my townhome. It's basically enough room for a small bed, dresser or wardrobe/chest for clothes, and maybe a (barely) partitioned toilet and shower. "Not great" is too positive to describe using such a space as a dwelling.

realreality• 8 years ago

I built a 150sqft home. It’s not a prison cell.

Maybe if somebody forced you to live in a situation you don’t want to be in, you’d find it oppressive. But when you build your own home, you get to learn what you really need in a home. (And tons of square footage probably isn’t one of those things)

sjg007• 8 years ago

Yeah a lot of junk fills that space. The only thing would be kids. Wife and kids take up a lot of space. You can do smaller spaces but you risk your sanity.

curuinor• 8 years ago

If a place can be zoned for 120 square feet, it can also have affordable eating establishments and all sorts of fun things to do, which you will be doing because you will mostly get out of your place.

walshemj2• 8 years ago

The picture looks more like a larger version of a beach hut they have on the UK's south coast.

gidan• 8 years ago

I’ve a van where I spent months living in it, it felt like heaven! Living room, shower, kitchen, bed and even tiny gym, everything in 6sqm (about 60sqft). I’ve spent quite a lot of time engineering it though.

nickthemagicman• 8 years ago

This sounds very interesting. Do you have a site or anything?

Aeolun6• 8 years ago

It’s fairly small, but a 110 sqft units is basically the default size for a single person living in Japan (Tokyo).

8bitsrule• 8 years ago

I'll take my own 120sq.ft. home over someone else's 360sq.ft. space any day, thanks. Especially at 1/3 the price.

lsc3• 8 years ago

consider the alternative around here; a shared room. I think a 12x12 retreat where I could lock the door and not be bothered would be dramatically better for introvert time than a shared room or even a private room in a shared house (thought a private room in a shared house is going to cost 2-4x as much)

I mean, consider that there's a lot of single introverts around here. If there are smaller places they can move to, there will be less competition for the giant places that introverts with children need.

jpindar• 8 years ago

Or a dorm room. I could live in a dorm as long I had my own bathroom and didn't have a roommate.

It might cause me to be more minimalist and to spend more of my time outside, but I consider that a good thing.

newname2018• 8 years ago

It's ridiculous all thru Cali One bedroom==1k Even in the outskirts towns Edit, that's per month

drinkzima2• 8 years ago

This article presumes acres for $420,000 in San Francisco. Not sure where the author is finding land values like that in the Bay - certainly not in San Francisco, where land is closer to $100/sqft at the low end ($4.5M).

tomjakubowski2• 8 years ago

The very first plan, and the one clearly worst-suited for a city with pricy land, needs a $420k/acre.

The next proposal, "low rise" apartment block:

Let's assume a 6000sf building footprint. This would contain twenty 250sf units per floor, with some shared space. Four stories means eighty units. With 80 units, we have 80 x $10,000=$800,000 budget for land. Our 6000sf building footprint sits on a quarter-acre (10,500sf) of land, so the land costs could be as much as $800,000 X 4=$3.2 million per acre.

And next, the "medium-rise" plan:

Next, we have a six-story structure, which is about the upper end of the Traditional City or "low-rise" format. We will step up here to a better standard of construction, such as brick or steel-frame, with a cost of $200/sf. This reduces our unit size to a fairly tiny 120 square feet, plus some common areas. Our footprint is still 6000sf, but since the unit size is smaller, we can get 40 units per floor, or 240 units for a six-story building. At $10,000/unit for land, that gives us a budget of $2.4 million for land. We will use more of an "attached" format here, with a little space in the back, or a 7000sf (sixth of an acre) plot. This translates into $2.4m x 6=$14.4 million per acre land and other costs.

The author is saying something about the density required to support affordable housing in San Francisco.

drinkzima2• 8 years ago

Sure, but then he's building for $100/sqft in SF, which is laughable. Going rates right now are closer to $400/sqft at the low-end, without permitting. I get aiming for smaller units to improve affordability, but the assumptions aren't grounded in reality.

DoreenMichele• 8 years ago

Our per-unit budget looks like this:

$30,000 construction costs

$10,000 land & other non-construction costs

$10,000 profit margin

The cheapest lot I can find in San Francisco is $200k, not counting the lots that are being foreclosed on because land is so expensive there.

https://www.zillow.com/san-francisco-ca/land/

I mean, I love the idea. This is the sort of thing I wish we could do. But this does not sound realistic to me. The numbers look like they were pulled out of thin air.

tomjakubowski2• 8 years ago

That's the per-unit budget. These ideas all involve many units per lot.

Aeolun6• 8 years ago

It’s telling that this is such a foreign concept to people (presumably from the US).

burfog2• 8 years ago

Because property taxes support the needs of residents, and because the density of residents would increase, the property tax obtained per acre would need to increase.

Thus you can't just shrink lot sizes by 90% and expect to shrink per-lot tax bills by 90%. The average tax, in dollars per acre, must increase in order to compensate for the extra people.

alwaysdoit• 8 years ago

Not in California. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1978_California_Proposition_13

burfog2• 8 years ago

Yes in California, or the proposal can't happen.

The limit of 1% of the property value looks to be a deal killer here. Cities have an incentive to zone for very low density.

The limit of 2% increase per year is also a huge problem, but not specific to small lots. If inflation ever goes above 2%, disaster strikes all California cities.

Well, there is one other way. Forget about property taxes. Set them all to 0%. Get the required 2/3 majority vote to raise income taxes, then grant a big chunk of that to the cities based on the number of people living there. Perhaps a UK-style council tax would also work.

wahern2• 8 years ago

the property tax obtained per acre would need to increase.

And it would, because property tax is assessed not just on the land but also on the structures. For condominiums each unit is assessed separately.

In addition, the greater the density the lower the cost of infrastructure. I don't think people, especially suburbanites, appreciate how ridiculously expensive roads and sewers are to build and maintain. Mostly because suburbanites tend to move on long before needing to rebuild, leaving behind broken, decaying landscapes. But that game can only last so many decades before society will be forced to deal with the consequences. The consequences are slowly coming into focus across the U.S. but are often couched in terms of affordability in more urban areas (because fewer places to move on to) and the broken finances of municipalities in more rural areas (because they're stuck with what turned out to be inherently unsustainable infrastructure costs).

morkfromork• 8 years ago

Maybe people could live in the apartments in shifts. Be at work 16 hours per day and sleep in the apartment for 8 hours. 3x the people. $50,000 apartment is now only $16,666.66.

Tade02• 8 years ago

When my father moved to his current apartment he noticed a peculiar thing: His neighbors, who worked at a nearby 24/7 take away bar would move in threes in and out of the apartment at certain hours.

This meant that there were at least six of them in a 25m^2 (277-ish sq ft) studio. While it was physically possible to fit three bunk beds there - albeit barely, they would have no space left for a wardrobe.

They spent two years like that and I imagine it was hell.

Aeolun6• 8 years ago

How do you need more than 6sqm for 3 bunk beds?

amanzi• 8 years ago

Interesting - 120sqft is just over 11sqm which, in NZ, is smaller than the minimum recommended size for a double bedroom. But perhaps a better comparison is with a small to medium sized caravan which can be be pretty comfortable at around the same size. I was just reading about the new Airstream Nest caravan which is roughly the same size and looks pretty comfortable. A single person (or a close couple) could probably easily share that for a couple years without going too crazy. Interestingly the Nest is about the same price - roughly $50k.

Aeolun6• 8 years ago

$300k for 66sqm would still be pretty good.

Y7ZCQtNo39• 8 years ago

I have no desire to live in a 250 s.f. unit. What does my future look like? How would I raise kids, if I wanted to have them? I don't know how anyone outside of the top 3-5% pulls it off in San Francisco.

tjr225• 8 years ago

Okay, but other people clearly do and this article is strictly about solving the housing issues in SF creatively. Also, you're presenting a false dichotomy - many people don't have kids, or don't yet have kids(Not to mention don't want them). Many people live somewhere for a short amount of time, or a few years, and then leave. I really honestly don't even see the point of your comment other than to cast shade against someone's lifestyle choice that you disagree with, or maybe to comment on the absurdity of the housing market in SF, with regards to the former I choose to mind my own business.

And to your main question - if you are somehow blessed with the opportunity to make a buttload of money and live on the (relative)cheap for a little while in SF, then your future is probably looking pretty good. We are fortunate to live in a country where you can go wherever the heck you want at any point that you want, especially if you're financially able to do so.

randyrand2• 8 years ago

SF is a city for the rich. I used to think such an idea was ridiculous - a city that only accommodated a single class of people. But having a single city without affordable housing doesn’t sound so crazy to me anymore. Whether or not a city wants affordable housing is a choice.

Honestly I’m not sure what changed in my opinion. I’m generally very pro-building, but I realize different people want different things.

lsc3• 8 years ago

I respect and support your decision to have a child. Someone needs to do it, and I'm glad that some people want to. (and I'm certainly willing to contribute to things like education to make that easier.)

But you need to understand that many of us (myself included) really don't want to have children ourselves.

We are people, too... and saying that all housing needs to be built large enough to accommodate a family with children is unfair and a waste.

I mean, sure, I pay more taxes than someone of my own income with children... and I think that's fine. If the additional taxes were spent on things like education, I'd even be okay increasing that difference and paying even more, but it does nobody any good to say I can't buy a smaller place because you want to have a kid.

oldmancoyote• 8 years ago

I live comfortably 6 months of the year in a cab-over camper (about 90 square feet). True, I lounge outside a lot reading and working on the computer, but that's still practical in a balcony overlooking a pedestrian street. The other 6 months I live in a 3000 square foot house, and I'm constantly dealing with maintenance and other hassles. A small studio apartment within walking distance to shopping and public transportation would work for me, but not for everyone. Actually, I'd pay $100,000 for such a studio if it were within walking distance of a university.

You don't have to please everyone for this to be viable.

ams6110• 8 years ago

I'd pay $100,000 for such a studio

Illustrating why they aren't available for $50,000.

bluGill• 8 years ago

No, what he would pay sets a maximum price for him. This has nothing to do with supply and demand which is the combination of all potential tenants and all potential landlords.

HarryHirsch• 8 years ago

Just for comparison, back then a one-room apartment in a 1960's Khrushchev plattenbau offered 30 m^2 of living space. This is what progress in the US look like?!

projectramo• 8 years ago

By the way, does anyone have any ideas about why the new generation is having fewer kids?

androidgirl• 8 years ago

That image of the street in Norway was absolutely gorgeous. I'm not the biggest fan of cities, but I would love an area like that, designed for humans.

If such a thing came to be in San Francisco I'd absolutely move.

The possibility of a small studio apartment for $50k in San Francisco (2016)

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