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Took me about a week to find some roommates through reddit.com/r/sfbayareahousing when I first moved out here, then about a day to find some new roommates and a

Took me about a week to find some roommates through reddit.com/r/sfbayareahousing when I first moved out here, then about a day to find some new roommates and a decent place to live on craigslist outside of that. Before that I used airbnb.com to find a place and there are a good number that are under $1000 a month outside downtown SF. She could've done something similar.

timr 11y ago
"Before that I used airbnb.com to find a place and there are a good number that are under $1000 a month outside downtown SF. She could've done something similar." OK...I just did. I found nothing less than $1500 a month, even expanding my search radius to include Marin, the entire east bay, and all of South San Francisco. The average nightly is $179. Of all the things in her post that you could choose be self-righteous about, her rent is the one that makes the least sense. Her budget was realistic. She wasn't living in luxury. People blow my mind. Stand up for something better than poverty, and you get attacked not just from the top, but from the bottom as well.
- autotune 11y ago
  It's not about "standing up for something better than poverty," it's about having enough sense to not move to one of the expensive cities in the U.S. for an $8/hour job, especially since you can easily become a Lyft or Uber driver and not just make more than that but make enough to commute out here from a place like Concord. Plenty of places in this range in the Concord area: https://www.airbnb.com/s/Concord?checkin=05%2F01%2F2016&checkout=05%2F31%2F2016&price_max=1304&ss_id=ic5kei32&s_tag=Fy-a9TVK https://www.airbnb.com/s/Concord?checkin=05%2F01%2F2016&chec...
  - timr 11y ago
    Yeah, totally. How entitled is it to move to a city where there are jobs, and expect to be paid enough to live within an hour of your full-time job without having to work a second gig as a cab driver? Screw her. In case you hadn't noticed, there are only 13 listings below $1000 on that AirBnB page. Five of them are bunkbeds at "Casa Hacker". If we expand the search to $1500 a month, we get listings like "Very Comfy Couch for 1-2 People" (omfg) and "Bunk Bed in Shared Room" on page one. The average is $3477 a month. Again, I draw two conclusions: a non-AirBnB one-bedroom in Concord for $1500 looks like a pretty good deal, and the people who are criticizing this girl's living situation are totally ridiculous.
    - autotune 11y ago
      Again, the point is not that SF has "jobs," the point is that it is stupid expensive and competitive as you have just pointed out to live out here regardless of the job you have, and in a free market society different skills have different demand, value, and pay as a result. It is entitlement to expect to make it out here on the wage she was making without having done some googling and research first, and looked to see if her skillset was enough to be able to live reasonably in SF. Someone with a bit more forthought would get the experience necessary in a more affordable city first before making the jump to SF or NYC. Those hostels and other rentals available in that price range are a short term solution to finding an ideal roommate situation rather than jumping right into getting a one year lease on your own right off the bat. I'm curious, do you think someone at a company in charge of updating the twitter feed should make as much as the CEO? Or the sales reps chasing down leads and bringing in business? Or the developers building the platform? How and why is the job she signed up for more valuable than the on-demand cab drivers who help bring people to work each day and are also forced to compete for decent housing situations in a city where one bedroom costs $3000 a month on average to live downtown?
anon1385 11y ago
I'm not American so I'm slightly confused by the terminology here. In the article it says she was renting a one bedroom place and looking for a roommate. I've frequently assumed that when Americans say 'roommate' they actually mean somebody they share a house with (what we would call flatmate or housemate in the uk), rather than somebody they share a bedroom with. But in this case it sounds like she was trying to find somebody to actually sleep in the same bedroom, since the place only had one bedroom. In your comment you say you have 'roommates'. So to be clear, you saying that you share a bedroom with at least two other people? And you consider this normal for an adult in a developed country? Is this really the situation in SV now? People who are "DevOps Consultants" have to share bedrooms with random strangers just to afford to live?
- mcguire 11y ago
  My understanding from reading the article was that the roommate (aka flatmate) fell through before renting an apartment, so she rented the cheapest 1-bedroom apartment she could find with the expectation that she would move when she found a suitable roommate.
- autotune 11y ago
  A "roommate" is typically someone who has a separate room each typically. A shared bedroom would be more of a hostel situation. What she should've done is found a two-bedroom roommate situation first or stayed in a hostel as noted above rather than get a one bedroom place. As far as my affordability goes, I could manage a one bedroom in this city if I wanted to be living month-to-month and live in the Tenderloin. Someone with the similar responsibilities that I have who is more senior in their career likely has more options.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- outworlder 11y ago
  > Is this really the situation in SV now? It is in San Francisco. So people commute. Public transportation is awful (the actual rides are fine, frequency and coverage are the main issues), so traffic is terrible. Edit: despite the name, you don't share bedrooms. You share a home.

timr 11y ago

"Before that I used airbnb.com to find a place and there are a good number that are under $1000 a month outside downtown SF. She could've done something similar." OK...I just did. I found nothing less than $1500 a month, even expanding my search radius to include Marin, the entire east bay, and all of South San Francisco. The average nightly is $179. Of all the things in her post that you could choose be self-righteous about, her rent is the one that makes the least sense. Her budget was realistic. She wasn't living in luxury. People blow my mind. Stand up for something better than poverty, and you get attacked not just from the top, but from the bottom as well.

autotune 11y ago
It's not about "standing up for something better than poverty," it's about having enough sense to not move to one of the expensive cities in the U.S. for an $8/hour job, especially since you can easily become a Lyft or Uber driver and not just make more than that but make enough to commute out here from a place like Concord. Plenty of places in this range in the Concord area: https://www.airbnb.com/s/Concord?checkin=05%2F01%2F2016&checkout=05%2F31%2F2016&price_max=1304&ss_id=ic5kei32&s_tag=Fy-a9TVK https://www.airbnb.com/s/Concord?checkin=05%2F01%2F2016&chec...
- timr 11y ago
  Yeah, totally. How entitled is it to move to a city where there are jobs, and expect to be paid enough to live within an hour of your full-time job without having to work a second gig as a cab driver? Screw her. In case you hadn't noticed, there are only 13 listings below $1000 on that AirBnB page. Five of them are bunkbeds at "Casa Hacker". If we expand the search to $1500 a month, we get listings like "Very Comfy Couch for 1-2 People" (omfg) and "Bunk Bed in Shared Room" on page one. The average is $3477 a month. Again, I draw two conclusions: a non-AirBnB one-bedroom in Concord for $1500 looks like a pretty good deal, and the people who are criticizing this girl's living situation are totally ridiculous.
  - autotune 11y ago
    Again, the point is not that SF has "jobs," the point is that it is stupid expensive and competitive as you have just pointed out to live out here regardless of the job you have, and in a free market society different skills have different demand, value, and pay as a result. It is entitlement to expect to make it out here on the wage she was making without having done some googling and research first, and looked to see if her skillset was enough to be able to live reasonably in SF. Someone with a bit more forthought would get the experience necessary in a more affordable city first before making the jump to SF or NYC. Those hostels and other rentals available in that price range are a short term solution to finding an ideal roommate situation rather than jumping right into getting a one year lease on your own right off the bat. I'm curious, do you think someone at a company in charge of updating the twitter feed should make as much as the CEO? Or the sales reps chasing down leads and bringing in business? Or the developers building the platform? How and why is the job she signed up for more valuable than the on-demand cab drivers who help bring people to work each day and are also forced to compete for decent housing situations in a city where one bedroom costs $3000 a month on average to live downtown?

anon1385 11y ago

I'm not American so I'm slightly confused by the terminology here. In the article it says she was renting a one bedroom place and looking for a roommate. I've frequently assumed that when Americans say 'roommate' they actually mean somebody they share a house with (what we would call flatmate or housemate in the uk), rather than somebody they share a bedroom with. But in this case it sounds like she was trying to find somebody to actually sleep in the same bedroom, since the place only had one bedroom. In your comment you say you have 'roommates'. So to be clear, you saying that you share a bedroom with at least two other people? And you consider this normal for an adult in a developed country? Is this really the situation in SV now? People who are "DevOps Consultants" have to share bedrooms with random strangers just to afford to live?

mcguire 11y ago
My understanding from reading the article was that the roommate (aka flatmate) fell through before renting an apartment, so she rented the cheapest 1-bedroom apartment she could find with the expectation that she would move when she found a suitable roommate.
autotune 11y ago
A "roommate" is typically someone who has a separate room each typically. A shared bedroom would be more of a hostel situation. What she should've done is found a two-bedroom roommate situation first or stayed in a hostel as noted above rather than get a one bedroom place. As far as my affordability goes, I could manage a one bedroom in this city if I wanted to be living month-to-month and live in the Tenderloin. Someone with the similar responsibilities that I have who is more senior in their career likely has more options.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
outworlder 11y ago
> Is this really the situation in SV now? It is in San Francisco. So people commute. Public transportation is awful (the actual rides are fine, frequency and coverage are the main issues), so traffic is terrible. Edit: despite the name, you don't share bedrooms. You share a home.