Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

$700 a Month for a Bed-Sized “Pod” in Downtown SF? Techies Are Renting Them

sfstandard.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 147 posts

Re: $700 a Month for a Bed-Sized “Pod” in Downtown SF? Techies Are Renting Them

#61

Post by strangesmells02 »

rm2040 wrote: post #42
strangesmells02 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also parking for vans. A van is an awesome way to live if you can get parking. If you make the rent like 1000 a month for the space, it will keep the riff raff out. Put up a workspace and a some showers. If something like that happened it would start a movement.

Like this? https://www.kift.com

Exactly like that! Ive spoken with them and that is a great group of folks!

Im in their discord and I think theyre onto something huge.

Theyre more targeted for remote though. I was thinking more along the lines of somewhere in the suburbs for people who need to go into the office.

You could have 5000 square foot property and rent 10 van spaces at 1000 a month each. OR have a duplex at 3000 a month each for 6000 total.

Plus for the landlord theres minimal maintenance.as vans are pretty off the grid.

You could credit screen and do background checks...etc.to help keep the riff raff out.

If the zoning would allow it I think it could be a real solution to housing.

Re: $700 a Month for a Bed-Sized “Pod” in Downtown SF? Techies Are Renting Them

#62

Post by johnsanders »

alexpotato wrote: post #11

My favorite story, possibly not true, about alternative sleeping quarters is from the days of sailing: Sailors who were too drunk to make it back to their ships after a long evening at the tavern would to a room in the back of the tavern, In that room would be two ropes stretched from wall to wall: 1. about waist height 2. just below armpit height. The top rope was slightly offset, horizontally, from the bottom rope.…

Pretty sure this was a thing in Victorian England. It's in Jack the Ripper stories and possibly where the word "hangover" came from I think.

Re: $700 a Month for a Bed-Sized “Pod” in Downtown SF? Techies Are Renting Them

#63

Post by userbinator »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #7

Not ideal, but a step in the right direction. We used to have SROs -- Single Room Occupancy -- units for singles, childless couples, retirees. We've torn down about a million of them since WWII. We need to update the concept and bring it back in some fashion. If your life is online, you don't need that much space. You don't need rows of bookshelves when you can download kindle books. Founders of online businesses are…

[flagged]

Re: $700 a Month for a Bed-Sized “Pod” in Downtown SF? Techies Are Renting Them

#64

Post by crhulls »

Maybe I’ll sound like the old out of touch rich guy (I’m 40 and won the startup lottery), but isn’t it great there is a way for people who are broke but have hustle to get their chance?

When I was an intern at Goldman Sachs me and my roommate rented an apartment in the Tenderloin for $600 a month. I slept in the closet. We stayed at the office 24/7 and focused on work. My former roommate is now a GP at a major growth equity fund.

I opted out of finance and instead of getting a banker salary I lived in another closet for a bit and a shed with no shower or bathroom (I had to walk to the main house).

I lived off $700 a month and pieced together a seed round in 2009 and things slowly got better from there.

Now I have a public company and can say I’m one of the few founders to get my investors a unicorn exit.

I know I am the outlier of outliers and had more luck than anything else, but god damn don’t disdain others who are willing to sacrifice to give it a go.

Re: $700 a Month for a Bed-Sized “Pod” in Downtown SF? Techies Are Renting Them

#65

Post by carlosjobim »

tomohelix wrote: post #22

Looking through this thread, it is surprising that there are actually people who consider this "acceptable". Like it is not something out of a dystopian hellscape. Amazing how much a person can be conditioned into accepting a terrible situation. And no, there are ways to fix this, there is just no will to do so, partly because of the people who see nothing wrong with it.

Poverty is the most profitable investment that man has ever conceived. Decades of dehumanization has erased all empathy and turned people into cold and calculating machines.

Re: $700 a Month for a Bed-Sized “Pod” in Downtown SF? Techies Are Renting Them

#66

Post by rm2040 »

strangesmells02 wrote: post #61
rm2040 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like this? https://www.kift.com

Exactly like that! Ive spoken with them and that is a great group of folks! Im in their discord and I think theyre onto something huge. Theyre more targeted for remote though. I was thinking more along the lines of somewhere in the suburbs for people who need to go into the office. You could have 5000 square foot property and rent 10 van spaces at 1000 a month each. OR have a duplex at 3000 a month each for 6000 tota…

Gotcha. The other day I saw some RVs here by google: https://maps.app.goo.gl/ZaPAEhWhnfW4Bn6XA

I don't know the legal set up is but it's close to what you describe.

Re: $700 a Month for a Bed-Sized “Pod” in Downtown SF? Techies Are Renting Them

#67

Post by kibwen »

gnicholas wrote: post #56

I wonder how feasible it is to have overnight guests. Aside from the size (and the lack of impressiveness…), it seems like the close quarters could make sound an issue.

That's just begging an entrepreneur to import the idea of love hotels from Japan (where presumably they serve much the same purpose, given the propensity for building walls out of paper).

Re: $700 a Month for a Bed-Sized “Pod” in Downtown SF? Techies Are Renting Them

#68

Post by ribosometronome »

userbinator wrote: post #52
TylerE wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ever eat Lobster? Shrimp? Both are, scientifically speaking, bugs.

I doubt you'd want to eat only lobster or shrimp, or other bugs, which is what the meme is about.

For those who were unfamiliar with the meme, it looks like it was popular with COVID truthers and climate change deniers. Probably why I missed that one. https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/i-will-not-eat-the-bugs

Re: $700 a Month for a Bed-Sized “Pod” in Downtown SF? Techies Are Renting Them

#69

Post by NSMutableSet »

>It’s comfortable enough for Lewis, who is 5 foot 9. (Lewis jokes that I should report that he’s an inch taller so that he can boast about it on the dating apps. I do not oblige.)

I think something got lost in translation here. In SF online dating app culture, 5'10 is the minimum "not short" height. Note that it's specifically not considered "tall". Why 5'10? I don't know. How do I know this? Way too many overheard conversations with coworkers, housemates, and countless acquaintances of the above over the past eight years of living here as a tech worker. The result is lots of men rounding 2-3 inches up to reach 5'10. I hesitate to call it lying, because there's a reality distortion field that results from enough people doing it. Lots of people are convinced that they or their partners are actually a taller height. I can't find it at the moment, but I saw a post a while ago about how this becomes a real problem for things like ski rentals, where inches in height difference actually matter.

Then 5'10-5'11 guys who previously wouldn't have rounded up to 6' are forced into doing so, because the expectation is that a guy who puts 5'10 is shorter than he really is. Then the 6' guys have to put 6'2 for the same reason. At 6'2 it doesn't matter anymore, since it's officially tall. Yes, this is really dumb. But the point is that it's not about "boasting", which sounds silly.

Re: $700 a Month for a Bed-Sized “Pod” in Downtown SF? Techies Are Renting Them

#70

Post by freitzkriesler2 »

throwawaaarrgh wrote: post #31

I scorned the SF tech scene growing up, and now that I'm getting older, it seems foolish that I didn't live there for a few years and try to fleece some VCs to build a crappy product and exit with millions, or at least take one of those cushy $350K jobs and bank most of it for a decade. Could be retired at 40, instead I'll be saving for retirement until 68.

Run the numbers, those salary numbers aren't as good as you think once taxes and CoL are factored in. And for every big VC payout there are thousands with worthless monopoly paper options. You're probably farther ahead than you think.
Post reply on HN