San Francisco says tiny sleeping β€˜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.

159 points

Ugh. Bougie homeless. Just sleep in your car like normal people. πŸ™„ /s

I do want sleep pods at airports.

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49 points

Shower pod at the Paris airport was the best layover I’ve ever had. You pay in 30 minute increments but so nice to get refreshed when you’re traveling across the Atlantic.

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15 points

Wow, 30min is really generous.

I bet that was really nice. πŸ™‚ As someone who takes red eyes, showering when I get there would be preferred.

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5 points

I would have a thirty minute shower than.

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31 points

San Franciscan here. What is β€œcar?”

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20 points

A mobile home. Don’t worry you’ll be able to rent one from Uber for the night soon enough.

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14 points

Well in San Francisco, a car is something that a robot learns how to navigate around the city streets.

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11 points

All of our robots just sit in the middle of intersections. What are these navigating robots you speak of?

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7 points

They’re the big boxes in the road with broken windows

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5 points

But that’s not important right now

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1 point

They’re things on the road that take you to your abode.

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106 points
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$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.

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35 points

but if people want to do it I guess whatever.

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.

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14 points

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.

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6 points

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

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4 points

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.

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9 points

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.

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7 points

Look up how much parking costs in SF lol

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0 points

I mean you pay 700 dollars a month not to have to live next to people who can only afford 50.

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13 points

What a gross comment

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2 points

Sorry that came across as rude, but I assume that is definitely some people’s mindset.

I wasn’t advocating for it.

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10 points

Hell, under my plan $700 will at least get you a walk in closet sized living box with a mini fridge.

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8 points

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 β€œthis 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.

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-1 points
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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.

Edit: lots of group think and virtue signalling here. If these aren’t there you don’t even have the choice, it’s 5k rent or move away from the city. That’s not bootlicking that’s fact. Whining about landlords being greedy isn’t a solution, and this is.

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2 points

You sound like the guy who founded a company to kill himself next to the wreckage of a really old ship.

β€œThat damned city, bitching about safety regulations! They need to just get out of the way of innovation!”

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89 points

ugh, this is dysphorian THIS IS NOT FUCKING NORMAL. THIS IS LATE STAGE CAPITALISM

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72 points

Late stage capitalism? They were doing shit like this in the 1800s. It IS capitalism.

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43 points

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.

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13 points

Holy balls. That was a wild read.

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14 points

revolution time!

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3 points

Yea, in my city (where owning your apartment was pretty much impossible until 20th century), people rented out corners inside normal apartments.

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19 points
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Removed by mod
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2 points

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.

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6 points

In San Francisco/Bay Area that doesn’t even cover a parking space per month.

In the US, the average home price sold was $495k. Where can you find a $100k house that doesn’t need a tear down or complete renovation?

source

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2 points

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.

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-1 points

This kid must be like 17-18 and has seen none of the world. This would be luxury to half the planet.

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2 points

half the planet lmao, no. Secondly you can point at the US why it’s so bad in those countries too

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-2 points

This is a dormitory with a shared living space, bathrooms and shower. If anything the β€œbunks” are quite generously sized.

Take a look at your comment and ask if maybe you’re flipping out unnecessarily.

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-3 points

ugh, this is dysphorian THIS IS NOT FUCKING NORMAL. THIS IS LATE STAGE CAPITALISM

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82 points

β€œA big hit” with people who desperately need accommodation that won’t bankrupt them.

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21 points

Yeah i love how every negative was couched within a sentence mentioning how popular and great these pieces of shit are

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4 points

β€œAnd there’s really cool people here!”

Get me a bucket, I’m gonna fucking puke.

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63 points

A pod for sleeping at home: πŸ‘ A pod for sleeping in a hotel: πŸ‘ A pod to rent for cheap on vacation: πŸ‘

A pod is your fucking home: πŸ‘ŽπŸ‘ŽπŸ‘ŽπŸ‘ŽπŸ‘ŽπŸ‘ŽπŸ‘ŽπŸ‘ŽπŸ‘ŽπŸ‘Ž

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16 points

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 β€œjust affordable enough” commutter home every day. I doubt these are many people’s long term permanent address.

$700/mo is excessive though.

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8 points
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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.

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3 points

Yay a in city version of a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bunkhouse Or a western version of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communal_apartment Or a adult/non criminal (for now) version of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workhouse

This sort of thing is not new and generally not a flex on the state of things.

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0 points
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