- cross-posted to:
- aboringdystopia@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- aboringdystopia@lemmy.world
Techies are paying $700 a month for tiny bed ‘pods’ in downtown San Francisco::px-captcha
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It’s funny to me how many of the things we were told communism would bring about are now being experienced under the current economic system.
But that’s obviously because of the socialist elements left in the system. /s
All people need to do is realize the country is a lot bigger than California and New York. There is still a lot of affordable housing, just not in those places anymore. Stop shunning the “flyover states”.
The problem is that there is not nearly as many good jobs in the rural areas, and most of the good jobs in tech related fields are moving employees back to the office, which means forcing people to work in big cities.
I realize it’s a bit of a chicken and egg problem. Business go where the workers are and workers go where the businesses are. But there is no reason tech has to be done in Silicon Valley. Any city in the country could be a tech hub, all it takes is for a successful tech company to put down roots there, and with the way things are going people shouldn’t need to be at a “tech company” to have a job in tech. And there are also other jobs that people can make a living at.
People moved to California, because that’s where the jobs are, but the jobs could just as easily be somewhere else if a company chooses to set up shop there, and use a low cost of living as a selling point. During the Industrial Revolution people moved to the rust belt for jobs. People have been moving based on available jobs for as long as there have been jobs. If these coastal mega cities are no longer viable due to housing prices. It’s time for another migration. And if people do think climate change is going to be a major issue in their lifetime, why not move now while it’s cheap and lock down a house?
Just because a city isn’t as big as LA or NYC doesn’t mean it’s rural. Chicago, Philadelphia, Columbus, Charlotte, Indianapolis, Denver, Oklahoma City, and Nashville are all bigger than Portland, which seems to be an area people have no problem moving. All except the last 3 are bigger than Seattle, which is big enough for Amazon, and Microsoft is not far away.
As a native Oklahoman, don’t tell people to move to Oklahoma. It’s a shit hole state.
I don’t think thats true. Housing prices are high everywhere, I have friends and family in the midwest their shit is out of control too. New York and San Fran are the most extreme for sure but costs of renting or buying have like tripled everywhere over the last decade
for a Job that you can literally do from everywhere on the planet…
The USA is better than this. We should not be forcing people to live in tiny little dorms to work in our tech hubs due to housing costs. Build more apartments, fund it through corporate taxes and actually make San Francisco affordable for our brightest tech workers.
History suggests that the USA really isn’t better than this. If you ignore the post WWII boom period, workers being treated terribly is the norm.
Well, no. Im not going to ignore the last 80 years. Of course progress takes time and future-looking we can still do much better. We have the means, we have the land, we have the know how.
Workers have been treated progressively worse since the Reagan era. You’re really only talking about a few decades of labor progress in the last century followed by decline.
And that was only because they had to beat the nazis and afterwards prove that capitalism wasn’t worse for common folk than communism. Once that credible bogeyman was gone, we were left with TINA, so they went back to screwing everyone over.
Part of the housing problem: https://youtu.be/CCOdQsZa15o?si=zupttseljqhz07RO
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://youtu.be/CCOdQsZa15o?si=zupttseljqhz07RO
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
This is just a shittier capsule hotel like they have in Japan. At least there they don’t charge you an arm and a leg for it.
Wikipedia article puts the pricing in Japan between 18 to 36 USD per night. That’s a range between 540 to 1080 USD per month. That makes San Francisco pricing average.
You can’t really compare a per night pricing to a per month pricing. Per month is always cheaper that per night but you loose the flexibility.
Anyway the price difference makes sense because SF housing is more expensive than Tokyo.
Ooh good call! I was misremembering the price!
They have much better standard, they have a door you can close, not just some curtains, the SF one is like a hostel.
Some have curtains in Japan as well.
I don’t dislike the idea of people living in dormitories, but with a price of $700 it seems that should have a full height room.
Can’t even stand up to get dressed in one of these
Can’t they work remotely? Why live in downtown SF? Seems like a waste of money.
These look little more luxurious than the low-income housing in Beijing.
Return to work is all about keeping money in the financial district.
Coffin Motels.
The term was coined in Neuromancer I believe.
Rather a converted van, cheaper and serves two purposes as can guarantee that $700 does not include parking.
Presumably part of the draw for living in downtown San Francisco is you don’t need to pay for the upkeep and feeding of a car
So sad. I am also afraid that in the future those kinds of accommodations will be thriving with people even more squeezed. Dystopian future.
I swear I remember a location like this in one of the newer Deus Ex games, which take place in a cyberpunk ish dystopia
In Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Adam Jensen, the game’s protagonist, searches for a computer hacker named Van Brugen and finds him hiding out in a place called Alice Pods in Hengsha, which is essentially a “hotel” composed of coffin-like closable pods with beds in them. Each guest rents a pod and can make use of the on-site facilities. It was communal living on a shoestring budget (or in Van Brugen’s case, hiding from the Pharmaceutical Megacorp trying to assassinate you).
The funny part is that the fictional Alice Pods actually had more amenities than this real-life pod hotel does. They had washers and dryer units, private shower stalls and toilets, and even late-night food trucks in the common area serving up food.
A cyberpunk dystopia actually wasn’t dystopian enough to match reality.
Oh hellll to the no… somebody is making a fucking killing on these idiots though!!
Are they idiots or are they unable to find housing within budget? Not sure about their rental situation. In Toronto you find ads for half a bed that you have to share for $500cad
They are idiots for staying in an area with prices that high if they aren’t making enough money to make it financially feasible
What a lot of people do is work and live in SF as frugally as they can, save a few hundred thousand bucks, then move away
Wouldn’t be something I would go for but if people are going for this it sounds like hell of a way to get filthy rich and screw tenants. Investment opportunity?!? Do they pay a deposit I can steal as well??
$550 is the most I ever paid for a room there, but that was in 2000. My dad loves to talk about his $12 apartment on Sanchez back in 1965.
Techies?
