300 people applied to rent $700/month sleeping pods in downtown San Francisco

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/oct/31/san-francisco-sleeping-pods-affordable-housing-crisis

by bookofjoe • 2 years ago

81 149 2 years ago

Finally. I've been wondering how long before more companies get involved in the "tiny-sleeping-pod" business. Everything seems to be pointing in that direction.

jimbob45• 2 years ago

It's a waste of time and resources for hotels to have me stay for ten hours during a layover. They'll need to wash the sheets, vacuum the room, and clean out the bathroom for my six-hour nap. The airport is too uncomfortable but the hotel is overkill. Pods would be a nice in-between for <12-hour stays. I wouldn't even mind if the pods were in the hotel because then I get to passively benefit from the hotel's security precautions.

onlyrealcuzzo• 2 years ago

I wouldn't even mind if the pods were in the hotel because then I get to passively benefit from the hotel's security precautions.

You wouldn't passively benefit.

You'd pay premium to stay in a pod in a hotel and get the benefits.

cameron_b• 2 years ago

The older Japanese variation of this is as a hotel.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capsule_hotel

yonran3• 2 years ago

According to Brownstone’s planning application for 12 Mint Plz https://sfplanninggis.org/pim/?tab=Planning+Applications&sea..., the proposed use is Residential (which is Principally Permitted) rather than Hotel (which requires Conditional Use Authorization from the Planning Commission), and also I do not see an Intermediate Length Occupancy application (which would be Principally Permitted), so they are only permitted to offer year-long leases at this time.

danielvaughn• 2 years ago

Time for funeral homes to pivot.

pixiemaster• 2 years ago

Daily Recurring Renting…

westmeal• 2 years ago

Japan already had this goin on and I remember the 'coffin hotels' in Neuromancer being written about in the 80s so shieeeeeeeeet it's been a long time coming.

greenavocado3• 2 years ago

Interestingly Moscow Mayor Sobyanin signed a decree banning apartments under 28 sqm, aiming to limit small-sized housing construction.

“The area of apartments (excluding the areas of balconies, loggias, terraces, cold storage rooms and apartment vestibules) should be at least 28 square meters for one-room apartments, including apartments in which the living room is not separated from the kitchen by intra-apartment partitions, and at least 44 square meters for two-room apartments,” provides the document published on the ConsultantPlus portal.

The decree came into force on August 1.

The fact that Moscow decided to abandon the construction of studios and apartments with an area of less than 28 square meters became known in May, when Moskomexpertiza sent out an information letter indicating that it would issue negative opinions on construction projects involving the construction of apartments with an area of less than 28 square meters

I wonder why they did this. I thought things were cheap over there and they had a huge amount of land?

juujian• 2 years ago

To keep out undesirables?

fsckboy• 2 years ago

moscow, like all major cities in the world, does not have a huge amount of available land.

johnnyanmac4• 2 years ago

What do you do with 28sqm? In my house that's not much more than a single room and then trying to fit in a tiny bathroom.

sourcepluck3• 2 years ago

If they can keep the prices of apartments cheap or at least reasonable, then it could make sense. I'd have to know more about the law on that to really judge.

mentalically4• 2 years ago

There is an old saying about the future being here but unevenly distributed. The pods look nice and would be even nicer with some kind of daily meal kit for a few extra dollars.

henry2023• 2 years ago

Soon we'll have MaaS (Malnutrition as a Service) to fit in smaller, cheaper pods.

pclmulqdq• 2 years ago

That's already here and it's called "Ozempic."

lm28469• 2 years ago

Yeah that's exactly what I was thinking about, something like this would be perfect: https://www.syfy.com/sites/syfy/files/styles/scale_1280/publ...

eviks• 2 years ago

You forgot curtains for some privacy, then that would be perfect

mentalically4• 2 years ago

I see those have the streamlined nutrition delivery and excrement management systems. It's a little out of my pay grade.

jameslk2• 2 years ago

Bugs and Soylent? Then you’d be getting the full future experience /s

mentalically4• 2 years ago

Preferably with some spices to make it palatable.

swarnie• 2 years ago

What if we could pass the protein slop directly in to you via some form of tube?

Would that help you adjust to your new pod?

mentalically4• 2 years ago

That's a little too sci-fi for me but I am sure many youngsters with higher risk tolerance would be happy to pay a subscription fee for more streamlined nutrition delivery systems.

hinkley2• 2 years ago

Business hammocks.

ratedgene2• 2 years ago

Do you have a patent on that idea?

hinkley2• 2 years ago

Simpsons did it.

chrisbrandow• 2 years ago

Make boarding houses legal again!!

marcuskane2• 2 years ago

Unironically, this.

America fails its lower-income citizens by pretending they don't (or shouldn't) exist when making zoning and building codes and such.

Mandate that housing needs to have individual bathrooms and kitchens for each unit, mandate that each unit needs a parking space or two, mandate a thousand other useless minutiae under the guise of safety or accessibility that don't actually matter but drive up costs, and then act surprised that only "luxury" housing gets built.

College students can happily and healthily live in dorms on campus, and yet we treat it as unthinkable that someone working at McDonalds lives in similar conditions. And so we don't build the infrastructure and the McDonalds worker ends up with a far worse outcome, but at least it's out of sight and out of mind that they're sleeping on a couch or staying in an overcrowded illegally-sublet apartment.

39896880• 2 years ago

We have these in the US and they are falling out of favor because they tend to attract crime and drugs. They are called SROs.

kulahan8• 2 years ago

It's absolutely not that some weird and unbelievable force is working to keep poor people from "existing". As it turns out, supply and demand can largely drive the cost of goods like homes, and you can't magically delete that value so poor people can live in the more desirable parts of town.

A college town is, really, only desirable to college students and the businesses that cater to them. Thus, the demand is very low, and almost nobody stays particularly long. The exceptions to this are colleges in or near very large towns, but even housing near the college tends to be much cheaper than housing in the city.

If McD's was a self-contained economy, it too would be surrounded by cheap housing.

I wish we could have conversations about things like this which are based in reality and not some fear of a macguffin enemy trying to "keep the poor from existing".

rickydroll2• 2 years ago

Boarding houses would work for a single person with no possessions. If you have a partner and/or kids, you need a different solution.

Mandate that housing needs to have individual bathrooms and kitchens for each unit, mandate that each unit needs a parking space or two, mandate a thousand other useless minutiae under the guise of safety or accessibility that don't actually matter

Many of these mandates exist because retrofitting is impossible. Got three new tenants with cars? Get the backhoe; it's time to build the underground car park. Can't get to the crapper because the doors and bathroom are too small for your wheelchair, and you won't take a dump in diapers? No apartment for you! Low income, have kids and need 3 bedrooms? No room in the boarding house. Go somewhere else.

Universal design is not expensive and makes living spaces more inclusive.

https://www.archdaily.com/994337/what-is-universal-design

ath92• 2 years ago

This just looks like a bed in a hostel, but rented per month instead of per night.

ratedgene2• 2 years ago

That's exactly what it is I think.

bell-cot2• 2 years ago

Perhaps more important - 283 of 'em won't make the cut:

the facility has had 300 people apply for its remaining 17 rental beds

Kye• 2 years ago

Roommates!

aaronrobinson• 2 years ago

AirHeadToToe.com

bell-cot2• 2 years ago

300 people / 17 spaces = 17 2/3

If I recall, the 1950's record for stuffing people into a phone booth is about 22.

Syonyk3• 2 years ago

blinks

You can rent an apartment for that in lower cost of living areas. Like, 500-700 square feet. And won't have the risk of city zoning being upset about it lurking over your head, which seems to be the case here.

The approval was rescinded over a misrepresentation of how many of the beds in the facility were deed-restricted affordable housing, Sider said.
“The building remains in violation of the planning and building codes, and while we continue to work with the proprietor to move his applications forward, we expect him to honor his agreement not to have new tenants move in until the issue is resolved, which should happen very soon,” Sider said.

moralestapia• 2 years ago

in lower cost of living areas

You mean elsewhere in SF, or elsewhere in the planet?

teaearlgraycold3• 2 years ago

Even the suburbs are pretty expensive around SF. Honestly these $700 pods are the cheapest options in the Bay Area.

awongh2• 2 years ago

Can you get a 500 sq ft apartment for $700 in the USA? My impression was that it’s gotten more expensive than that. Definitely for a 2nd tier city. Maybe not for an n tier city….

smeej• 2 years ago

You can in Indianapolis. I guess I don't know how people determine "tiers," but Wikipedia tells me it's the 16th largest U.S. city.

kulahan8• 2 years ago

5 years ago in Alabama, I rented a 1200 sq ft apartment for $750/mo. This was in Prattville. No clue if it's still that cheap, but yeah, $700/500sqft is super believable.

In a *city* of population > X?

Syonyk3• 2 years ago

Sure. I found a handful in smaller towns in Iowa without any trouble.

Even in Ames, Iowa (home of Iowa State University, 65k people per the 2020 census and I'm not sure how many of ISU's 30k students that counts), I'm finding a range of apartments in the $700-$800 range that are 500+ sq ft. On Zillow, so hardly the best pricing one is likely to be able to arrange.

Now, it's not San Francisco, but the point is that even in a not-tiny-town, an apartment (or even some smaller standalone homes!) for the cost of a twin mattress sized sleeping pod is totally doable.

ToucanLoucan• 2 years ago

That used to be the case for where I live, but no longer. And I live in a pretty damn cheap area (semi-rural Wisconsin). Cheapest apartments here now go for $950 plus.

avgDev• 2 years ago

I can't imagine sleeping in such a setup. This is so twisted imo.

rosstex• 2 years ago

Take that, Europe!

ozgrakkurt• 2 years ago

Unhinged capitalism wins again

readthenotes12• 2 years ago

I suspect sarcasm, but if the alternative is a cardboard box, yeah.

Or, look at some favelas, or perhaps how poor in asia live

elintknower• 2 years ago

Sad state of our current reality that educated people are even considering this...

teaearlgraycold3• 2 years ago

I know of people that lived in vans while working at Google. You can save a lot.

dangoodmanUT• 2 years ago

700????????

jbverschoor2• 2 years ago

Compared to 7000+ ? That's a lot of starbucks every month

9999000009993• 2 years ago

700$ a month to effectively live in a homeless shelter.

Holy crap, what a horrible horrible idea.

Retr0id• 2 years ago

homelessness, gentrified

9999000009993• 2 years ago

It literally takes a single person who isn't quite nice to make this experience a living hell.

And you can't easily get rid of them due to eviction laws.

from-nibly• 2 years ago

Wrong, this is cool because they are black.

newaccount743• 2 years ago

It's more like a dorm room / hostel, but with a privacy curtain.

Accomodations like this are common for low cost travelling, the only difference is that these are for medium term stays.

an_guy3• 2 years ago

It's more like a dorm room / hostel

It's literally bed with curtains stacked together, there is no "room" involved.

strangattractor2• 2 years ago

I think we're turning Japanese. Capsule Hotels have been around forever. I stayed in one in the '90s. If you take their nightly rate $24 X 30 days it magically works out to $720 per month. Call it a hotel, sleeping pod whatever you want we are behind the curve on sleeping pod technology. We need to catch up.

jbverschoor2• 2 years ago

Same :) 6'4, but the capsule hotel was awesome.

gpm• 2 years ago

These "mattress with a curtain" "pods" definitely aren't cutting edge anything.

jameslk2• 2 years ago

Pods as a hotel concept seems like a “unique travel experience” where as pods as a living condition seems more like a city “code smell”

They actually have these type of “pods” at regular hostels in SF. I stayed in one for a couple of weeks once when I was new to the city. The noise, especially people coming in late, the germs (I got sick during my stay), and the lack of privacy is pretty bad. I can’t imagine living in one long term and I’m lucky I don’t have to, but if it’s your only choice (or you’re supremely cheap) then I guess it’s better than the streets.

Now if you double the price, exclude all the poor people, and call it a “cool invite-only hacker house”, that’s an entirely different thing!

strangattractor2• 2 years ago

Yes I distinctly remember all the drunk salarymen showing up at around 2 in the morning and waking me. I also forgot to open the air vents and woke up gasping for oxygen. On the plus side the hotel had a wonderful bath which was really relaxing after the 12 hour flight.

Incipient• 2 years ago

If the population of a society things "catching up" by making people live in a capsule hotel is a good idea, they're heading towards something very distopian future.

There will always be some level of stratification of wealth, but a society that is unable to provide individual housing for people is in a sad, sad state.

mrguyorama• 2 years ago

How many high rise apartments are going up in San Fransisco? There are like five being built/renovated in my east coast, fairly small, hyper liberal city.

jeffbee2• 2 years ago

Construction in SF has been essentially zero for decades and remains that way. Last year the city completed only 2600 homes, the lowest total for any of the past 7 years. At no time in the past 50 years has SF created even half as much housing as Austin or Seattle.

Editing to add: If you vote in SF and this bothers you, vote against every incumbent who caused this.

readthenotes12• 2 years ago

When was the leaning tower of "I got too much money" built?

kulahan8• 2 years ago

SF is essentially on a small island with no quality bedrock under it. There's really nowhere left to build. Often when excavating dirt, they find old ships buried which then need to be examined for historical relevance. It's a nightmare to build there. It's truly the worst situation to be stuck in!

teaearlgraycold3• 2 years ago

There’s one going up in SoMA (or East Cut if you prefer) right now. I think a number of buildings are on hold for bureaucratic reasons.

m4632• 2 years ago

Why privacy curtain and not a door?

guerrilla• 2 years ago

Cost.

yonran3• 2 years ago

Probably if the pods had a solid door, then each pod would be considered a room under San Francisco’s interpretation of the fire code and would require a separate fire sprinkler, like the WeWork phone booths https://sfstandard.com/2024/02/01/san-francisco-office-phone...

gausswho• 2 years ago

When your domicile is strictly for sleeping (or at most laying down), guess where you spend more of your time? Out and about. Being a part of the community. Probably contributing more towards local business. I welcome this news because I expect it'll bring more life to the city.

Now imagine a forward thinking municipality that subsidizes development of such pods, both construction and renting. Alongside dense walkable areas. It'd be great for business. And I'd wanna live there!

kulahan8• 2 years ago

We're already in a situation where many Americans don't know a damn thing about providing food for themselves, and this even further takes us in that bleak direction. Hard pass. This is bleak and miserable.`

wmichelin• 2 years ago

"Let's not solve the housing crisis, let's worry about people's cooking abilities"

bacchusracine• 2 years ago

What do you have against people "more towards local business"?

That's basically what is intended. Since people live in a pod, they'll eat out more often so that's more money extracted from them. Gotta keep the economy going, right?

cedws• 2 years ago

People are being forced into serfdom and live in pods due to stratospheric, inflated house prices. Here’s why that’s a good thing.

frakkingcylons• 2 years ago

That could be an article title from either the Onion or the WSJ Opinion section.

water-data-dude• 2 years ago

“serfdom” is a good way to characterize it, since it’s a lot harder to save money (and eventually be able to rent/buy a real place to live) if you have to go out for meals, entertainment, and meeting your social needs.

buzzert2• 2 years ago

I don't think anybody's really being "forced" to do anything here. There are very affordable spots in the East Bay, some even along the BART.

int_19h2• 2 years ago

If you have to force people to "be a part of the community" by making their homes useless aside from sleeping, don't you think that's a strong indication that something must be wrong with "the community"?

quotemstr• 2 years ago

Same energy as those degrowth types who want to ban washing machines so that people forced to wash clothes by hand will do it communally to make it less boring.

falcolas• 2 years ago

I'd think that an average would go broke pretty quick, having to always eat out. Third spaces - particularly free third spaces - in the US don't really exist in most cities. At least not without facing accusations of vagrancy.

dialup_sounds• 2 years ago

This narration, but the B-roll is slums, favelas, housing projects, and Hong Kong coffin cubes.

bitcharmer• 2 years ago

How is this the top comment?

rustcleaner• 2 years ago

Probably contributing more towards local business.

Practically nobody can afford to do this. Everywhere is about nickel and diming people to be present there. Society has a very terribly serious rent-seeking problem.

Expected value for most people's interactions economically is negative, meaning they pay more out than they receive for their other inputs. How else does the casin... err social entitlement ponzis, do-no-work bureaucracies and administrations, etc, survive? Somebody pays the house.

What is needed is very high corporate taxes, and high taxes on any rent-based (interest, service fees [Netflix, Spotify, your ISP], etc) income after deductions but before dividends or buybacks. We must realign our society back to production if we want to return to material wealth and not end up navel-gazing in poverty like S. Asia.* We can do each others haircuts and oil changes until we're out of clippers and oil, but if not enough clippers and oil are being produced then we're all going to be materially poorer as GNP rises.

(* Spidey's conspiracy-sense: I wonder if some of the push for mindfulness and other S. Asian esoterism lately isn't an attempt at a civilizational software patch on the West, using memetic components evolved to deal with abject poverty in the S. Asian continent over centuries, in preparation for an upcoming sundowning of western economic hegemony. Statecraft has as one of its requisites maintaining order and decorum of the citizen-human livestock.)

m4632• 2 years ago

I think of it as something completely different...

Spend a few days in the city, but have a larger more affordable house elsewhere away from the madness.

also, this could be a way people "return to office" possibly until a job with sane policies comes around.

(of course the curtain bit is unsettling and not sane)

MrMcCall• 2 years ago

On a recent episode of NHKOnline's Design Stories, about sleep, they tour an updated capsule hotel, with separate men's and women's floors, and built-in biometric monitoring to evaluate sleep apnea and such, anonymized and delivered a week or so later.

https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/shows/2101034/

(They also show a cool new kind of bed designed by a chimpanzee expert to mimic the daily tree beds chimps make every evening.)

stuckinfuture• 2 years ago

Thanks for the link

vlod2• 2 years ago

Waiting for them to serve bugs in the pod:

Marc Andreessen @pmarca

I will not live in the pod, I will not ride on the bus and pretend it’s an airplane, and I will not eat the bugs on the fake plane.

[0] https://x.com/pmarca/status/1515107959474294784?lang=en

timeon• 2 years ago

Spot one thing that do not belongs there.

vlod2• 2 years ago

Haha, obviously pmarca. But it might be a good place for VC's to rent, to scope out potential targets.

imzadi• 2 years ago

No one is talking about the inherent sexism in this. They're only talking to men. Only showing men living in these. This would very likely NOT work for women at all.

dvngnt_• 2 years ago

i feel like this design probably not, but they do have unisex bathrooms which do work. i think sleeping pods could work too if designed properly

newaccount743• 2 years ago

Why not? Hostels work like that, and they are just fine. Lots of women staying in hostels. Usually they have woman only rooms and mixed rooms.

legitster2• 2 years ago

This is actually somewhat of a return to what used to be a historic norm: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-room_occupancy

The idea that every single adult needs a single-family zoned space for themselves is something of a historic anomaly. The only reason these aren't more common or affordable is because housing like this got zoned to death.

int_19h2• 2 years ago

It is a historic anomaly in the same sense that most quality of life improvements are. Thing is, when and where those arrangements are common, people try to get out of them as fast as they can, and for good reasons.

Mind you, it beats lack of housing altogether as well as some other historic options (like say barracks). But I don't think we should consider this normal or desired when it's economically feasible to give everyone proper living space - which it is.

legitster2• 2 years ago

If this type of housing is considered just fine for college students, why should it be illegal to provide for people once they graduate?

I get that not everyone would want to live this way their whole lives, but part of the issue with the US housing market is that there are no entry-level housing options. This makes housing not just expensive for young people or poor, but drives housing prices up across the entire inventory.

Most quality of life improvements, especially in urban areas, have been driven by efficiencies and economies of scale.

johnnyanmac4• 2 years ago

It's not more common because the US has a metric fuck ton of land and people want to raise families one day. The wiki entry even says that this is traditionally for the homeless. I instantly got Army barrack vibes from this, but at least that's usually for the early bootcamp days for the first few years, not an entire lifestyle choice.

I only really see it justified for single young people, but even then $700 for this is insulting (even for a place like SF) unless I'm missing something. Why not just rent a communal house at that point?

javanissen• 2 years ago

Because renting a room in SF costs more than $700.

I understand asking $700 for this feels icky, but the only reason they can do it is because of the insane scarcity of housing in SF. If we want this to not be a competitive option, the way forward is just to build more housing - like these people are doing.

ASalazarMX• 2 years ago

The idea that every single adult needs a single-family zoned space for themselves is something of a historic anomaly

Guess we should give up on smartphones, air conditioning, personal computers, more than one pair of shoes, more than one TV, among many new historic anomalies.

DrNosferatu2• 2 years ago

So were incurable bacterial infections, high childhood death rates and even Human Rights.

In England, the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities has established the Nationally Described Space Standard [1], which specifies that a one-bedroom, one-person flat should have a minimum gross internal floor area of 37 square meters if it includes a shower room, or 39 square meters if it has a bathroom.

I guess anything significantly below that can be called outright poverty.

[1] https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/technical-housing...

DrNosferatu2• 2 years ago

Another common criteria for salubrity of habitation is that the rent shouldn’t be more than 1/3 of your liquid income.

yonran3• 2 years ago

I think someone should investigate why it took a year to permit this change of use from Credit Union to Residential Group Housing, which should be Principally Permitted in the Use District C-3-G of the address at 12 Mint Plz. According to the sfchronicle article linked, “James Stallworth, CEO of Brownstone Shared Housing, said the city’s planning department was unresponsive for around nine months as the company sought to bring the project up to code.” But sfplanning disputed this: “Dan Sider, the planning department's chief of staff, said claims that the department was unresponsive were “utter nonsense” and said Stallworth only filed an application in July after “months of noncooperation.”” So which was it?

Is San Francisco still failing to approve housing in a timely manner, or did the Brownstone drag thier feet?

hcurtiss• 2 years ago

This strikes me as just fine, but for one problem — other people snoring. I fear I’d have to wear earplugs or something, which always seem to fall out of my ears part-way through the night.

tiahura2• 2 years ago

It’s so frustrating that this country becomes more and more overpopulated, yet we won’t get serious about stopping mass immigration.

oblio4• 2 years ago

Overpopulated? The US is 185/249 countries and territories.

tiahura2• 2 years ago

We’re not trying to out Bangladesh Bangladesh.

more_corn2• 2 years ago

Tell me again there’s no housing crisis.

throwaway313373• 2 years ago

You know, when I first time heard about "sleeping pods" I imagined some of cool high-tech sci-fi shit, like:

- full soundproofing - your own microclimate with always perfectly fresh air and precise control over temperature and humidity - huge screen like right above your head, so that you can stare at it while lying on your back

But in reality they always just look like bunk beds with some extra walls, that's it.

Disappointing.

iamleppert• 2 years ago

Train the latest AI model to keep the heat on…

300 people applied to rent $700/month sleeping pods in downtown San Francisco

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