So, at ~$23 a day, basically the same price as a capsule hotel in Tokyo with pretty much the same features? Not a bad deal given the differences in average rent between Tokyo and SF.
you and most of you who think this is a good thing are gonna be changing their tune the second the dude in the bunk above you or next to you starts jacking off.
They mention utilities but does this include a "real" address one can use for "important things" like IDs, voter reg., banking/credit?
There's a difference between having a place to sleep and a place to live.
It almost strikes me like two ends of housed/homelessness spectrum coming together in a loop
Edit: not trying to be cynical and think this has a use-case. Just kind of conflicted since it's billed as shorter term/monthly lodging but also compared to housing market in general
Seems in line with the gold rush tradition established almost 200 years ago, fascinating how long SF has been the Mecca for people chasing the latest wave of opportunity.
As a short term solution this could be a pretty good setup. If you just need a cheap place to stay for a week or two, this would be pretty nice. Decent alternative to a hotel as long as it's clean and well maintained.
Is there a curfew? How can you sleep with people climbing in or out of those things at different times? It looks like they have electronics box fans in the photo which raises some questions about how great the air quality is sleeping in a box.
I think it'd be cool if you could group these together and have a modular hallway system with doors so maybe a significant other or even children could live in a more enclosed space and so ppl could lock up personal things. I imagine like having sliders you can side panels through to make an enclosure around a set of two or four of these. I think it'd be cool to combine with a huge commercial kitchen ppl could rent for food based businesses or use for communal dinners and maybe ppl tip the cook or something for residents.
You also could add outdoor activities and other amenities so people could have recreation without needing to travel too far, and a library of tools, washer and dryers, recreational vehicles people could rent or check out free (RVs maybe have a 10 fee per day plus gas), everything else is shared and maybe have a recycle clothing thrift shop that's free, I guess more like a clothing swap...
I'd love to open something like this everywhere rent is too high to see if it can cause prices to drop to normal rates because of over supply.
Or if the pods themselves were the modular bit, have them slide out, drop them on a fork lift, move without packing and unpacking all your stuff.
Plus if your life was already set so you could live in one of these pods, and they were themselves modular, your “RV” could just be a trailer set up to carry and provide power to a handful of pods.
$700/mo could be a good deal. But buying a house before the market blew up in 2020 was the real move. 3k sqft for $2.7k/mo and sub 3% - near a desirable tech hub - is a long-term wealth machine.
I pay $850/month for a tiny house in the woods where I work remote. I get that a lot of people want to live a city lifestyle, but if you're only in SF for the work, you don't have to be
That's a bit expensive, I do the same thing but the tiny house is an RV and I pay less than 400. It's absolutely fantastic, when I tell people what it costs me a month to support 3 people they can't believe what they're hearing. But you tell them you don't live in a city and they immediately default to "life's not worth living unless you're in a city."
That's a great option for an onsite-only position in the area. Keep my cheapass house, go work in SF for a bit until the inevitable layoff / contract EOT, save the difference in buckaroonies.
Someone should do this near Boeingville WA. The aero/def pay scales are hilariously incapable of meeting the CoL in the area, but I'd take a sleep cube and stay in the area, drive home weekends.
If this exists and people are willing to buy it then their revealed preferences mean (according to them) this is the best option.
If you try to prevent things like this from existing then you are just forcing people into what is by definition a worst option (either homelessness, a more expensive place, or a place farther away).
I’m currently shuttling back and forth between SF and Seattle and I would like to stay in a similar pod in Seattle though. I am currently renting $1000 per month for a room in someone’s house where I hardly stay for 50% of the time.
When the tech boom in SF is over, and the city is a ruin of its former grandiosity, all that will remain are the Capsule Pods, a stark reminder to future generations of the hubris, but also dedication, of generations past of tech workers who flocked to the city for its abundant opportunities.
Just like Tokyo which embraced urban decay once its economic boom of the 80s and 90s ended with a turn of its economic fortunes, the mighty capsule hotel lives on. Monument to humankind's quest to sacrifice everything for a better tomorrow.
When the AI wars had decimated SF's landlords by sucking talent to low-slung Nevadan and Midwest campuses with their giant on-site data centers where vital AI IP could be protected in-house from then-rampant corporate espionage, and tech workers became used to living on sprawling estates overlooking the foothills of the Cascade Mountains, the rolling plains and mighty rivers of the midwest, or even the snow-capped peaks of Colorado, all that remained in DTSF of its former glory days were the Capsule Hotels, now passed around through many owners, clinging to life through contorting themselves in gymnastic knots to satisfy the whims of frequently recalibrated zoning laws, relentlessly fine tuned by desperate councilfolks in a futile attempt to try to revive the once mighty tech city by the sea.
Somewhere, in a moldy and much forgotten capsule hotel, on a crowded steamy backstreet, in a once grand part of downtown San Francisco, a young techworker wannabe with a recidivist 90s grunge fashion sense, now all the rage, tries to corral their GPTBook into creating the next killer AR app. On the back of their torn black shirt is emblazoned the phrase, in deliberately aged white plastic ink: "Staring at the gutter, dreaming of the stars." above a logo of Elon Musk fighting Mark Zuckerberg in a cage fight, with a Mortal Combat style "FINISH HIM" banner in red beneath the ironically pixelated color rendering.
I agree coastal cities will have large populations. But tech workers in particular may migrate inland. As this is HN, I knew somebody would poke holes in my "midwest migration" (for what, to be close to data centers? yeah right!) thesis. I honestly struggled to find a compelling reason for it, and settled on, "reduction of corporate espionage".
I think under the thesis of a super hypercompetitive quadrillion dollar opportunity in AGI than will literally transform the global landscape, companies relocating their workers, not just to be close to the data center, but also to the remote rural campus / company town where they can be protected from espionage (it's been said that SF is like a spies dream, which is why there is apparently so much espionage there), will actually be a thing.
If every critical employee of your company is read in on the secret sauce of your AI engine, and we assume the opportunity is large enough, every employee will be under constant attack by adversaries. Just like with the National Labs, it's easier run secret projects out in the middle of nowhere. So, it's like "nuclear secrecy arms race" but with a corporate twist that replaces nukes with AI. The center of gravity of the largest companies will then suck all the other tech out that way, too. What do you think?
I admit that as stated in the story excerpt it looks pretty weak as migratory reasoning. But that above is kind of the back story, hopefully it makes it more strong.
How can dehumanization be such a quick process? For the commenters who think this is swell, did you know that if you start smoking opium you will find the pod much more comfortable? And you won't need as much money to sustain yourself as your only expenses will be a pod and opium.
Or not. Depending on your culture you may want to prioritize happiness, social relations and health (or booze) over work. Not everyone is of Puritan heritage (or similar in other parts of the world)
https://i.imgur.com/4ljzk2Y.jpeg