16 ms·

The Affluent Homeless: A Sleeping Pod, a Hired Desk and a Handful of Clothes

67 points by jameslk 8y ago

40acres 8y ago
It's surprising to me that we aren't heavily subsidizing the development of high density apartments. Developers are building luxury housing because low and middle income is not economically viable -- the cost of building materials and labor is rising, so why not use tax breaks and permit deregulation to spur more growth? I was surprised that the 2017 tax cut didn't seem to have any mechanisms to address the lack of middle class housing. I'm not sure if "opportunity zones" is sufficient.
- wnissen 8y ago
  Subsidizing? They are forbidden, period. My city is a Bay Area suburb and the last apartment building of any kind was built in 1978. Even if you could get zoning permission, the fee per housing unit is about $100K. This is supposed to cover the "impacts" on traffic, sewer, and, hilariously, affordable housing. A developer would have to be insane to build apartments for $200K when the city is getting $100K, when they can build a 2000 sq. ft. condo or zero-lot-line home instead.
- cbhl 8y ago
  I also found this surprising, until I realized that property taxes come from and city councils consist of the very people who like their neighbourhood and want it to stay exactly the way it is.
- duxup 8y ago
  I don't want to go too far down the path, but I don't think the motivations behind the 2017 US tax cut had anything to do with addressing middle class issues. The motivation wasn't about solutions as much as a sort of tax and government nihilism.
- 0xB31B1B 8y ago
  Developers build luxury units not because constructing middle income housing not “economically viable” but rather because constructing middle income housing has essentially been banned in most cities by modern zoning codes and building regulations. Most cities either allow new housing as a single family home or as part of a 25+ unit building with minimum space requirements and 2 parking spots/unit. These regulations (parking, unit size minimums, the nature of constructing a 25 unit building, scarcity etc) make the housing more expensive. Minneapolis has recently changed their city wide zoning laws to allow for 4 unit building city wide, which will allow for cheaper “missing middle” type housing (2 - 6 unit building w no parking) that used to be constructed across urban neighborhoods in the US. There are new 2br units in 6plexes in Portland selling for ~350k. It’s possible to create new housing for the middle class, we just need to allow it.
  - 40acres 8y ago
    Agreed, I live in downtown Portland and 3-5 luxury apartments have been built or are nearing completion within a 10 minute walk of my apartment. These all look like they can hold 100+ apartments, but are marketed towards yuppies and retirees. I grew up in a privately owned middle density (around 100 apartments) building, no parking but close to public transit and affordable for a wide range of income, it's baffling that more of these don't exist.
    - davidw 8y ago
      Basically any new housing in a place with a housing crisis is "luxury housing". Definitely worth supporting legislation like HB 2001 in Oregon that makes it possible to build slightly less expensive housing in broader areas.
      - 0xB31B1B 8y ago
        It’s ironic because in SF, the majority of new units constructed are in the bottom 35% cost for their neighborhood
  - sologoub 8y ago
- helen___keller 8y ago
  > It's surprising to me that we aren't heavily subsidizing the development of high density apartments Maybe a first step is to legalize higher density constructions in general - allow using a larger percentage of the same lot, subdivided into more units, all by right without the need to obtain exceptions from your local zoning board and without the chance for your neighbors to veto the development. If it were dirt simple to replace a single family home on a large lot with multiple homes on subdivisions of the lot, by right, for literally every single neighborhood in the state, we would avoid this cat and mouse game where everyone wants higher density until it comes to their neighborhood, because in their neighborhood the {traffic, schools, transit, lack of transit, sewer infrastructure, environmental concern, blocking sunlight, blocking view, etc} situation is too precarious to take the risk, so we need everyone to move somewhere else Even if we want the government to take heavy action to spur more construction, part of the reason every developer builds luxury housing is because it's so damn expensive and risky just to get through the stuff that comes before construction even begins (and consequently, lots sit idle for years at a time going through approval). That idle capital needs a return, so the only viable construction is luxury. We can address this issue now, and so if we inject taxpayer dollars to address housing later they will be more efficiently used anyways
- rhino369 8y ago
  Luxury housing is middle income housing with a doorman and better countertops. Luxury housing is built because it’s more profitable. But as new luxury is built, older luxury just becomes middle income. Hell, in DC the luxury places are often smaller than older middle income apartments. Also in some cities, middle income people cannot afford housing period.
- bluGill 8y ago
  https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/12/11/immutable-laws-of-affordable-housing https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/12/11/immutable-law... See rule 5. Developers always build luxury hosing, some years latter it is affordable as the rich move on.
- Teckla 8y ago
  high density apartments Light sleeper here. Apartments are a nonstarter for a lot of people, due to poor soundproofing. Unless and until soundproofing gets better -- and I mean a LOT better -- apartments will never be practical for a nontrivial percentage of the population, as much as we might otherwise prefer them.
  - decebalus1 8y ago
    > Unless and until soundproofing gets better -- and I mean a LOT better -- apartments will never be practical for a nontrivial percentage of the population, as much as we might otherwise prefer them. Most likely never going to happen, at least not in the US where apartment buildings are basically wooden matchboxes. I grew up in the well-known gray communist concrete blocks in Eastern Europe and I never heard my upstairs neighbors peeing until I moved to the USA.
  - imtringued 8y ago
    I don't get it. If my neighbours didn't renovate their apartments by drilling holes or hammering on the walls I wouldn't even know that other people besides me live in the same building. Sound proofing isn't going to stop walls from vibrating. Just suck it up. 2 days of noise a year isn't a nonstarter.
    - objectivetruth 8y ago
      Hi, let me help you "get" it with some counter anecdata: I've lived in places where I could fully hear spoken conversations of my neighbors. When you live in that situation for a while, hearing advice like "it's JUST 2 days a noise a year" and "Just suck it up" will drive you to a homicidal rage :)
  - detaro 8y ago
    Soundproofing doesn't need to get better. Buildings just need to be built with it. (Annoyingly, retrofitting internal dampening appears to be very difficult, which is a problem)
  - Cd00d 8y ago
sna1l 8y ago
Really playing fast and loose with the word "homeless" here...
christkv 8y ago
Is this just the modern version of a flop house ?
- everyone 8y ago
  Of course not! Its a 'Pod' .. Thats why its much more expensive than a flophouse.
helen___keller 8y ago
> He rents a bed in a large room with other people who rent beds, for nights, weeks or months at a time, through a service called PodShare Cynically, this sounds like we've found a way to reinvent the packed tenements of the industrial revolution
- EGreg 8y ago
  Hoovervilles for the sharing economy
- 0xB31B1B 8y ago
  Why is that cynical/implying this is bad? IMO We need more tenements. Someone making 50k/year working in a central city should be able to chose if they want a bigger unit and a commute, or a bed to crash in and a walk to work. There is a huge and underserved demand for these by for example grad students, recent college graduates, consultants/long distance commuters (ex, live in Oregon fri - Sunday, fly to SF and work mon - thurs)
  - overthemoon 8y ago
    Speaking for myself here: I don't object to this as a possibility for people who want it--I object to the possibility of this becoming the norm. We're not there yet, of course, but problems creep in when people feel like they don't have a choice. It's also a problem when situations like this are seen as a reasonable tradeoff rather than a symptom of a larger problem about how society is organized in the first place.
  - ravenstine 8y ago
    Hell, I'd personally camp out in a storage unit if I could. All I want is a place to sleep and store a handful of things. Since zoning laws prevent that and because there are few affordable & legal options, I'm always forced to rent a larger amount of space than I need for thousands of dollars rather than hundreds. I'm not saying that I'd live so minimally forever, but as a single guy trying to save money, it'd be be a boon to my finances. The reason I don't currently live at PodShare, like the subject in that article, is that I remembered seeing the monthly fee being well over $1000, at which point it makes no sense over simply renting a room in someone's house.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
CharlesColeman 8y ago
> Steven T. Johnson, 27, works in social media advertising What does that mean exactly, in his case? Is he an "influencer" like TheYachtGuy (https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/the-lonely-life-of-a-yacht-influencer https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/the-lonely-life-of-a-yac...)?
- povertyworld 8y ago
  I wonder if Podshare is one of his clients.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
bena 8y ago
That's great if you don't have any responsibility but yourself. For some people, being homeless isn't a real option.
- josefresco 8y ago
  I had the same reaction, that this lifestyle is pretty common for young, single professionals living in the city. 25+ years ago my sister lived in the city and also didn't own a car, washing machine, house or... because of her tiny apt lots of "things". This is another trash (IMHO) article, seeking to depict "millennials" as some sort of new breed of human more willing to share when in act their just young and unattached.
rootedbox 8y ago
My nephew is 22 lives in his van in SF. He makes plenty each month from his GI bill, and it's a really nice van. I would never call him homeless living in a van.. at this point he's made a lifestyle choice for a guy who prefers to be at the beach on the weekends. I would say the same for the guy in this article. He's made a lifestyle choice. True homelessness is not a lifestyle choice.
- wvenable 8y ago
  The question is, what is his alternatives? Living in SF making plenty each month doesn't mean he can afford to own something reasonable. Perhaps he would make a different choice if he had more opportunities.
grecy 8y ago
It's amazing there is still such a stigma around people that choose an alternate lifestyle, or simply choose not to own a 4,000 sq. ft. McMansion that we stoop so low as to call them Homeless. The word has such dirty connotations. I'm quite certain the author of this article would call me homeless. In fact I've been living in my vehicle for 3 years while driving around Africa, and I've never been happier in my life. Certainly night and day compared to when I was working a Desk as a Software Engineer, renting a nice place. I have no interest in ever owning a home, and I'm sure I'll move between renting and living on the road as I see fit. That I should be labeled homeless for this is partially laughable, but also really disgusting. The drive to force people to consume is intense in the West.
- kristianc 8y ago
  > I'm quite certain the author of this article would call me homeless. In fact I've been living in my vehicle for 3 years while driving around Africa, and I've never been happier in my life. Certainly night and day compared to when I was working a Desk as a Software Engineer, renting a nice place. There is a difference between you, who has taken a conscious decision _not to own_, and has the means to drive around Africa, and someone who has no choice but to do that in order to support a precarious existence as a social media content producer in Hollywood.
  - bluGill 8y ago
    That social media producer in Hollywood chose that as well. He could move to a number of cities where the cost of living is lower. He could have gone to school and become a brain surgeon which would pay for a nice house even in Hollywood.
    - kristianc 8y ago
      Different people are endowed with different natural abilities. It's not just a good school that stands between someone becoming a brain surgeon or not. Likewise, the cost of living in Scranton, PA is proportionate to the opportunity for gainful employment there.
    - 8y ago
paulpauper 8y ago
The short-term inconvenience pays off in terms of saving money to buy a home and invest rather than pissing away the money on rent and other recurring expenses. Rent is a major rain on savings, especially in high cost of living areas.
- aetherson 8y ago
  Is this guy living inexpensively? He takes ride-share, which is much more expensive than owning a cheap car. Owning two pairs of clothes doesn't really lower your clothing costs, and my guess is that he doesn't cook much for himself, which is another good way to drive up your cost of living. Podshare lists rates of $1,000/month in LA (not SF). I don't know what local rents are there, but my guess is that Podshare is below the rates of studio apartments, but at or around the rates of renting one bedroom in a house.
  - neetdeth 8y ago
    House sharing: It's like podsharing but you get an entire room with a door that closes.
  - paulpauper 8y ago
    hmm..but The cost off the car does not include insurance, gas, insurance. A cheap old car will probably need a lot of repairs.
    - aetherson 8y ago
      You pay for insurance and gas (and repairs) on an Uber, too. If your utilization of the car is low, you can get per-mile car insurance and pay a low cost for it. You can get a cheap new car for a lot lower TCO than traveling an equivalent number of miles with Uber. Like, a lot lower, unless your utilization is crazy low. If you travel under 2,000 miles per year or so, Uber might be the best option for you.
- josefresco 8y ago
  If I had "pissed away rent money" before 2008 it would have saved me tens of thousands of dollars. Timing and luck is important.
choeger 8y ago
It always baffles me how the proponents of the share economy do not see its downside: If you do not own what you use, you don't control it. Individual, motorized, traffic has a huge negative impact, that's clear. But how about it enables you to travel whereever you want whenever you want? Owning a house or an apartment might seem unnecessary in our modern society, until the next rent increase or some disturbance in your financial situation (assuming you're not sitting on a huge mortgage). And why does nobody talk about how we have to pay every fucking minute, regardless what we do, in the share economy? Maybe you spend less money for each activity, compared to owning, but maybe you are just paying more often? And finally, what about responsibility? If I own nothing, do I ever care about something? Who cares about the gearbox of a rented car? Just have a look at the interior of your average subway train. When the street I live in gets to dirty, why not simply move away? While I love to be able to rent things that I cannot or don't want to own, I have the impression that this "share everything" paradigm is actually just a toxic mixture of permanent monetarization and centralised control.
- 0xB31B1B 8y ago
  Owning things also brings liabilities. Hit a pothole and pop a car tire -> 250 dollars down the drain. Own a house and roof starts leaking? -> 10k dollars down the drain. There are certainly a huge class of people for which owning a car or a house makes sense, but there are also a lot of people who might be able to afford a car, but when compared to the total costs of maintenance + depreciation + unexpected repairs + parking + insurance + time spent keeping it running (getting gas, finding parking, taking it to the shop), going Car less and using uber + transit + bike + rentals on weekends makes much more sense
  - aetherson 8y ago
    I mean, these things are all priced into renting. There's some virtue in paying them in a predictable, steady rate instead of getting spikes of bad luck, but it's not like you pay less for car tires on an Uber, or for roofs in a rental unit, than you do as a car owner or a home owner. And if you want predictability, you should be able to get insurance, or just reserve a chunk of your income for a "home maintenance fund." (EDIT: I guess that to the extent that you live in a multi-story rental building, you and other renters above and below you share the costs of the single roof above you. But that's, first, not the major cost of home ownership, second, not applicable to all renting, and third, probably a small enough savings that it's eaten up by profits to your landlord and the costs of maintaining a super.)
kristianc 8y ago
> He's part of a new-ish group of young people. He's educated and owns his own business. He could be considered well off, but he's also, in a way, homeless. By choice. > There are two big reasons for this shift: the price of housing and student loan debt. A little more than a third of millennials currently own homes, a rate lower than Generation X and baby boomers when they were the same age. That's the very definition of not by choice. This current effort to rebrand millennials not owning anything as a positive lifestyle choice based on happy clappy sharing economy "choosing experiences" BS is really nefarious. Given the choice, Millennials would own. They "choose experiences" because they can't afford to own stuff.
- DennisP 8y ago
  The article does say that some do it by choice, but a lot "rent and share because they're broke and they need to save money."
  - logfromblammo 8y ago
    It reeks of rationalization. They don't want to admit to themselves that they got dealt a bad hand, so pretend that they own nothing and rent their entire life by choice. It's like breaking someone's kneecaps, and they say they're in the wheelchair by choice, because walking is dangerous and inefficient, and knees are a horrible leg-joint design anyway. They never had a choice, so they invent the illusion of choice by retroactively justifying that they would have chosen what they have now if they actually did have a different option that some might have considered to be objectively better. I am well familiar with this. I consciously unwant the things that I want, but cannot afford, all the time. No, I don't need a car manufactured after 2010. No, I prefer to stay at home for my vacation. Eating out is for people who can't shop and cook. The current crop of movies in theaters seems pretty lame. I can wait another season for new tires. We can have strips of skirt steak instead of top sirloin. In fact, how about roaster chicken instead of beef? It's bullshit that I shovel over myself, and I know it. If I had more money, I would definitely buy more and better stuff with it--to own and not rent.
    - deleted 8y ago
mauvehaus 8y ago
I think a more accurate term for people who have a living arrangement that isn't within the confines of most people's idea of "home", but is a stable home to them nonetheless is "houseless". Full-time RV'ers, for instance, would be houseless. A person who has given up their house or lease, and disposed of or stored their possessions to take a long-term trip (gap year, thru-hike, etc) would be houseless. Hashtag vanlifers? Houseless. Similarly, I'd call somebody living the lifestyle presented in the article houseless, not homeless.
- chaseha 8y ago
  That's an important distinction to make. "Homeless" carries a large negative connotation and lumping in relatively affluent people like this dilutes the large issue of homelessness [not by choice] faced by so many
- Balgair 8y ago
  Jessica Bruder's Nomadland: Surviving America In The Twenty-First Century is a very good look into the RV'ers and their lives[0, 1]. Though at first, many people profess to love the freedom of the RV life, upon further inspection, most are very unhappy with it. Financial crises typically nucleate the move into the RV and that lifestyle. Per a recent NPR interview: "And then maybe four days later, a week later, if I'm still hanging around as a reporter, that's when I hear about the foreclosure or the 401(k) that got wiped out, those other details. So people are eager to tell you that they chose this, but their options have narrowed quite a bit in recent years. So, you know, on the one hand, there is the I'm out there and I'm having an adventure. And on the other hand, this is sometimes the result of few options." In the end, people are involved in complicated choices in their complicated lives. Still, it seems that most people would rather not be RV-ing their way through life, but make the best of it and put on a smile despite their situations. A similar effect may be occurring with the OP. [0] https://www.npr.org/2017/09/25/553532591/nomadland-tracks-rising-number-of-americans-living-on-the-road https://www.npr.org/2017/09/25/553532591/nomadland-tracks-ri... [1] https://www.amazon.com/Nomadland-Surviving-America-Twenty-First-Century/dp/039324931X https://www.amazon.com/Nomadland-Surviving-America-Twenty-Fi...
  - 8y ago
wtdata 8y ago
My personal opinion: It comes a point in your life when you realize that responsibilities actually give a meaning to your life. Mostly responsibilities for other people - your family above all - and that you do depend on economic stability for that, which means owning your own house (or at least be well into its mortgage payment) and having a career or owning a real business (not some startup haemorrhaging money). The kind of lifestyle depicted here is just postponing what you should be really doing and making it more difficult in the future.
mdupin 8y ago
If you can't afford to buy a house, then by definition you're not "affluent." Many of the type of people profiled in this article can't afford to buy a house in their locales, and thus should not be labelled "affluent." The article should be called something like, "The Non-Indigent Homeless." Words matter.
sevensor 8y ago
Private quarters with shared kitchen and bathroom? We used to call these "rooming houses." They've been around since the industrial revolution if not longer. Every time I see an article about the strange new living circumstances being chosen by Millenials, it ends up being an article that's actually about the 40-year aberration that was America between 1960 and 2000. Edit: speling
mschuster91 8y ago
Funny enough: (mostly conservative-leaning, old) people complain that the young generation has less kids, has girst time sex much later in life etc., but they seem to ignore the cause: stuff like this. How can one have a relationship without having a space to live said relationship in? Call me a pessimist but this is going to hit societies hard in the next decades. When there are not enough young people to sustain pension systems, and the people in their 30s or 40s don't have a house, savings or any other asset to make up for not having a decent pension system...

67 points by jameslk 8y ago

It's surprising to me that we aren't heavily subsidizing the development of high density apartments. Developers are building luxury housing because low and middle income is not economically viable -- the cost of building materials and labor is rising, so why not use tax breaks and permit deregulation to spur more growth? I was surprised that the 2017 tax cut didn't seem to have any mechanisms to address the lack of middle class housing. I'm not sure if "opportunity zones" is sufficient.

wnissen 8y ago
Subsidizing? They are forbidden, period. My city is a Bay Area suburb and the last apartment building of any kind was built in 1978. Even if you could get zoning permission, the fee per housing unit is about $100K. This is supposed to cover the "impacts" on traffic, sewer, and, hilariously, affordable housing. A developer would have to be insane to build apartments for $200K when the city is getting $100K, when they can build a 2000 sq. ft. condo or zero-lot-line home instead.
cbhl 8y ago
I also found this surprising, until I realized that property taxes come from and city councils consist of the very people who like their neighbourhood and want it to stay exactly the way it is.
duxup 8y ago
I don't want to go too far down the path, but I don't think the motivations behind the 2017 US tax cut had anything to do with addressing middle class issues. The motivation wasn't about solutions as much as a sort of tax and government nihilism.
0xB31B1B 8y ago
Developers build luxury units not because constructing middle income housing not “economically viable” but rather because constructing middle income housing has essentially been banned in most cities by modern zoning codes and building regulations. Most cities either allow new housing as a single family home or as part of a 25+ unit building with minimum space requirements and 2 parking spots/unit. These regulations (parking, unit size minimums, the nature of constructing a 25 unit building, scarcity etc) make the housing more expensive. Minneapolis has recently changed their city wide zoning laws to allow for 4 unit building city wide, which will allow for cheaper “missing middle” type housing (2 - 6 unit building w no parking) that used to be constructed across urban neighborhoods in the US. There are new 2br units in 6plexes in Portland selling for ~350k. It’s possible to create new housing for the middle class, we just need to allow it.
- 40acres 8y ago
  Agreed, I live in downtown Portland and 3-5 luxury apartments have been built or are nearing completion within a 10 minute walk of my apartment. These all look like they can hold 100+ apartments, but are marketed towards yuppies and retirees. I grew up in a privately owned middle density (around 100 apartments) building, no parking but close to public transit and affordable for a wide range of income, it's baffling that more of these don't exist.
  - davidw 8y ago
    Basically any new housing in a place with a housing crisis is "luxury housing". Definitely worth supporting legislation like HB 2001 in Oregon that makes it possible to build slightly less expensive housing in broader areas.
    - 0xB31B1B 8y ago
      It’s ironic because in SF, the majority of new units constructed are in the bottom 35% cost for their neighborhood
- sologoub 8y ago
helen___keller 8y ago
> It's surprising to me that we aren't heavily subsidizing the development of high density apartments Maybe a first step is to legalize higher density constructions in general - allow using a larger percentage of the same lot, subdivided into more units, all by right without the need to obtain exceptions from your local zoning board and without the chance for your neighbors to veto the development. If it were dirt simple to replace a single family home on a large lot with multiple homes on subdivisions of the lot, by right, for literally every single neighborhood in the state, we would avoid this cat and mouse game where everyone wants higher density until it comes to their neighborhood, because in their neighborhood the {traffic, schools, transit, lack of transit, sewer infrastructure, environmental concern, blocking sunlight, blocking view, etc} situation is too precarious to take the risk, so we need everyone to move somewhere else Even if we want the government to take heavy action to spur more construction, part of the reason every developer builds luxury housing is because it's so damn expensive and risky just to get through the stuff that comes before construction even begins (and consequently, lots sit idle for years at a time going through approval). That idle capital needs a return, so the only viable construction is luxury. We can address this issue now, and so if we inject taxpayer dollars to address housing later they will be more efficiently used anyways
rhino369 8y ago
Luxury housing is middle income housing with a doorman and better countertops. Luxury housing is built because it’s more profitable. But as new luxury is built, older luxury just becomes middle income. Hell, in DC the luxury places are often smaller than older middle income apartments. Also in some cities, middle income people cannot afford housing period.
bluGill 8y ago
https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/12/11/immutable-laws-of-affordable-housing https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/12/11/immutable-law... See rule 5. Developers always build luxury hosing, some years latter it is affordable as the rich move on.
Teckla 8y ago
high density apartments Light sleeper here. Apartments are a nonstarter for a lot of people, due to poor soundproofing. Unless and until soundproofing gets better -- and I mean a LOT better -- apartments will never be practical for a nontrivial percentage of the population, as much as we might otherwise prefer them.
- decebalus1 8y ago
  > Unless and until soundproofing gets better -- and I mean a LOT better -- apartments will never be practical for a nontrivial percentage of the population, as much as we might otherwise prefer them. Most likely never going to happen, at least not in the US where apartment buildings are basically wooden matchboxes. I grew up in the well-known gray communist concrete blocks in Eastern Europe and I never heard my upstairs neighbors peeing until I moved to the USA.
- imtringued 8y ago
  I don't get it. If my neighbours didn't renovate their apartments by drilling holes or hammering on the walls I wouldn't even know that other people besides me live in the same building. Sound proofing isn't going to stop walls from vibrating. Just suck it up. 2 days of noise a year isn't a nonstarter.
  - objectivetruth 8y ago
    Hi, let me help you "get" it with some counter anecdata: I've lived in places where I could fully hear spoken conversations of my neighbors. When you live in that situation for a while, hearing advice like "it's JUST 2 days a noise a year" and "Just suck it up" will drive you to a homicidal rage :)
- detaro 8y ago
  Soundproofing doesn't need to get better. Buildings just need to be built with it. (Annoyingly, retrofitting internal dampening appears to be very difficult, which is a problem)
- Cd00d 8y ago

sna1l 8y ago

Really playing fast and loose with the word "homeless" here...

christkv 8y ago

Is this just the modern version of a flop house ?

everyone 8y ago
Of course not! Its a 'Pod' .. Thats why its much more expensive than a flophouse.

helen___keller 8y ago

> He rents a bed in a large room with other people who rent beds, for nights, weeks or months at a time, through a service called PodShare Cynically, this sounds like we've found a way to reinvent the packed tenements of the industrial revolution

EGreg 8y ago
Hoovervilles for the sharing economy
0xB31B1B 8y ago
Why is that cynical/implying this is bad? IMO We need more tenements. Someone making 50k/year working in a central city should be able to chose if they want a bigger unit and a commute, or a bed to crash in and a walk to work. There is a huge and underserved demand for these by for example grad students, recent college graduates, consultants/long distance commuters (ex, live in Oregon fri - Sunday, fly to SF and work mon - thurs)
- overthemoon 8y ago
  Speaking for myself here: I don't object to this as a possibility for people who want it--I object to the possibility of this becoming the norm. We're not there yet, of course, but problems creep in when people feel like they don't have a choice. It's also a problem when situations like this are seen as a reasonable tradeoff rather than a symptom of a larger problem about how society is organized in the first place.
- ravenstine 8y ago
  Hell, I'd personally camp out in a storage unit if I could. All I want is a place to sleep and store a handful of things. Since zoning laws prevent that and because there are few affordable & legal options, I'm always forced to rent a larger amount of space than I need for thousands of dollars rather than hundreds. I'm not saying that I'd live so minimally forever, but as a single guy trying to save money, it'd be be a boon to my finances. The reason I don't currently live at PodShare, like the subject in that article, is that I remembered seeing the monthly fee being well over $1000, at which point it makes no sense over simply renting a room in someone's house.

deleted 8y ago

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CharlesColeman 8y ago

> Steven T. Johnson, 27, works in social media advertising What does that mean exactly, in his case? Is he an "influencer" like TheYachtGuy (https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/the-lonely-life-of-a-yacht-influencer https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/the-lonely-life-of-a-yac...)?

povertyworld 8y ago
I wonder if Podshare is one of his clients.

deleted 8y ago

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bena 8y ago

That's great if you don't have any responsibility but yourself. For some people, being homeless isn't a real option.

josefresco 8y ago
I had the same reaction, that this lifestyle is pretty common for young, single professionals living in the city. 25+ years ago my sister lived in the city and also didn't own a car, washing machine, house or... because of her tiny apt lots of "things". This is another trash (IMHO) article, seeking to depict "millennials" as some sort of new breed of human more willing to share when in act their just young and unattached.

rootedbox 8y ago

My nephew is 22 lives in his van in SF. He makes plenty each month from his GI bill, and it's a really nice van. I would never call him homeless living in a van.. at this point he's made a lifestyle choice for a guy who prefers to be at the beach on the weekends. I would say the same for the guy in this article. He's made a lifestyle choice. True homelessness is not a lifestyle choice.

wvenable 8y ago
The question is, what is his alternatives? Living in SF making plenty each month doesn't mean he can afford to own something reasonable. Perhaps he would make a different choice if he had more opportunities.

grecy 8y ago

It's amazing there is still such a stigma around people that choose an alternate lifestyle, or simply choose not to own a 4,000 sq. ft. McMansion that we stoop so low as to call them Homeless. The word has such dirty connotations. I'm quite certain the author of this article would call me homeless. In fact I've been living in my vehicle for 3 years while driving around Africa, and I've never been happier in my life. Certainly night and day compared to when I was working a Desk as a Software Engineer, renting a nice place. I have no interest in ever owning a home, and I'm sure I'll move between renting and living on the road as I see fit. That I should be labeled homeless for this is partially laughable, but also really disgusting. The drive to force people to consume is intense in the West.

kristianc 8y ago
> I'm quite certain the author of this article would call me homeless. In fact I've been living in my vehicle for 3 years while driving around Africa, and I've never been happier in my life. Certainly night and day compared to when I was working a Desk as a Software Engineer, renting a nice place. There is a difference between you, who has taken a conscious decision _not to own_, and has the means to drive around Africa, and someone who has no choice but to do that in order to support a precarious existence as a social media content producer in Hollywood.
- bluGill 8y ago
  That social media producer in Hollywood chose that as well. He could move to a number of cities where the cost of living is lower. He could have gone to school and become a brain surgeon which would pay for a nice house even in Hollywood.
  - kristianc 8y ago
    Different people are endowed with different natural abilities. It's not just a good school that stands between someone becoming a brain surgeon or not. Likewise, the cost of living in Scranton, PA is proportionate to the opportunity for gainful employment there.
  - 8y ago

paulpauper 8y ago

The short-term inconvenience pays off in terms of saving money to buy a home and invest rather than pissing away the money on rent and other recurring expenses. Rent is a major rain on savings, especially in high cost of living areas.

aetherson 8y ago
Is this guy living inexpensively? He takes ride-share, which is much more expensive than owning a cheap car. Owning two pairs of clothes doesn't really lower your clothing costs, and my guess is that he doesn't cook much for himself, which is another good way to drive up your cost of living. Podshare lists rates of $1,000/month in LA (not SF). I don't know what local rents are there, but my guess is that Podshare is below the rates of studio apartments, but at or around the rates of renting one bedroom in a house.
- neetdeth 8y ago
  House sharing: It's like podsharing but you get an entire room with a door that closes.
- paulpauper 8y ago
  hmm..but The cost off the car does not include insurance, gas, insurance. A cheap old car will probably need a lot of repairs.
  - aetherson 8y ago
    You pay for insurance and gas (and repairs) on an Uber, too. If your utilization of the car is low, you can get per-mile car insurance and pay a low cost for it. You can get a cheap new car for a lot lower TCO than traveling an equivalent number of miles with Uber. Like, a lot lower, unless your utilization is crazy low. If you travel under 2,000 miles per year or so, Uber might be the best option for you.
josefresco 8y ago
If I had "pissed away rent money" before 2008 it would have saved me tens of thousands of dollars. Timing and luck is important.

choeger 8y ago

It always baffles me how the proponents of the share economy do not see its downside: If you do not own what you use, you don't control it. Individual, motorized, traffic has a huge negative impact, that's clear. But how about it enables you to travel whereever you want whenever you want? Owning a house or an apartment might seem unnecessary in our modern society, until the next rent increase or some disturbance in your financial situation (assuming you're not sitting on a huge mortgage). And why does nobody talk about how we have to pay every fucking minute, regardless what we do, in the share economy? Maybe you spend less money for each activity, compared to owning, but maybe you are just paying more often? And finally, what about responsibility? If I own nothing, do I ever care about something? Who cares about the gearbox of a rented car? Just have a look at the interior of your average subway train. When the street I live in gets to dirty, why not simply move away? While I love to be able to rent things that I cannot or don't want to own, I have the impression that this "share everything" paradigm is actually just a toxic mixture of permanent monetarization and centralised control.

0xB31B1B 8y ago
Owning things also brings liabilities. Hit a pothole and pop a car tire -> 250 dollars down the drain. Own a house and roof starts leaking? -> 10k dollars down the drain. There are certainly a huge class of people for which owning a car or a house makes sense, but there are also a lot of people who might be able to afford a car, but when compared to the total costs of maintenance + depreciation + unexpected repairs + parking + insurance + time spent keeping it running (getting gas, finding parking, taking it to the shop), going Car less and using uber + transit + bike + rentals on weekends makes much more sense
- aetherson 8y ago
  I mean, these things are all priced into renting. There's some virtue in paying them in a predictable, steady rate instead of getting spikes of bad luck, but it's not like you pay less for car tires on an Uber, or for roofs in a rental unit, than you do as a car owner or a home owner. And if you want predictability, you should be able to get insurance, or just reserve a chunk of your income for a "home maintenance fund." (EDIT: I guess that to the extent that you live in a multi-story rental building, you and other renters above and below you share the costs of the single roof above you. But that's, first, not the major cost of home ownership, second, not applicable to all renting, and third, probably a small enough savings that it's eaten up by profits to your landlord and the costs of maintaining a super.)

kristianc 8y ago

> He's part of a new-ish group of young people. He's educated and owns his own business. He could be considered well off, but he's also, in a way, homeless. By choice. > There are two big reasons for this shift: the price of housing and student loan debt. A little more than a third of millennials currently own homes, a rate lower than Generation X and baby boomers when they were the same age. That's the very definition of not by choice. This current effort to rebrand millennials not owning anything as a positive lifestyle choice based on happy clappy sharing economy "choosing experiences" BS is really nefarious. Given the choice, Millennials would own. They "choose experiences" because they can't afford to own stuff.

DennisP 8y ago
The article does say that some do it by choice, but a lot "rent and share because they're broke and they need to save money."
- logfromblammo 8y ago
  It reeks of rationalization. They don't want to admit to themselves that they got dealt a bad hand, so pretend that they own nothing and rent their entire life by choice. It's like breaking someone's kneecaps, and they say they're in the wheelchair by choice, because walking is dangerous and inefficient, and knees are a horrible leg-joint design anyway. They never had a choice, so they invent the illusion of choice by retroactively justifying that they would have chosen what they have now if they actually did have a different option that some might have considered to be objectively better. I am well familiar with this. I consciously unwant the things that I want, but cannot afford, all the time. No, I don't need a car manufactured after 2010. No, I prefer to stay at home for my vacation. Eating out is for people who can't shop and cook. The current crop of movies in theaters seems pretty lame. I can wait another season for new tires. We can have strips of skirt steak instead of top sirloin. In fact, how about roaster chicken instead of beef? It's bullshit that I shovel over myself, and I know it. If I had more money, I would definitely buy more and better stuff with it--to own and not rent.
  - deleted 8y ago

mauvehaus 8y ago

I think a more accurate term for people who have a living arrangement that isn't within the confines of most people's idea of "home", but is a stable home to them nonetheless is "houseless". Full-time RV'ers, for instance, would be houseless. A person who has given up their house or lease, and disposed of or stored their possessions to take a long-term trip (gap year, thru-hike, etc) would be houseless. Hashtag vanlifers? Houseless. Similarly, I'd call somebody living the lifestyle presented in the article houseless, not homeless.

chaseha 8y ago
That's an important distinction to make. "Homeless" carries a large negative connotation and lumping in relatively affluent people like this dilutes the large issue of homelessness [not by choice] faced by so many
Balgair 8y ago
Jessica Bruder's Nomadland: Surviving America In The Twenty-First Century is a very good look into the RV'ers and their lives[0, 1]. Though at first, many people profess to love the freedom of the RV life, upon further inspection, most are very unhappy with it. Financial crises typically nucleate the move into the RV and that lifestyle. Per a recent NPR interview: "And then maybe four days later, a week later, if I'm still hanging around as a reporter, that's when I hear about the foreclosure or the 401(k) that got wiped out, those other details. So people are eager to tell you that they chose this, but their options have narrowed quite a bit in recent years. So, you know, on the one hand, there is the I'm out there and I'm having an adventure. And on the other hand, this is sometimes the result of few options." In the end, people are involved in complicated choices in their complicated lives. Still, it seems that most people would rather not be RV-ing their way through life, but make the best of it and put on a smile despite their situations. A similar effect may be occurring with the OP. [0] https://www.npr.org/2017/09/25/553532591/nomadland-tracks-rising-number-of-americans-living-on-the-road https://www.npr.org/2017/09/25/553532591/nomadland-tracks-ri... [1] https://www.amazon.com/Nomadland-Surviving-America-Twenty-First-Century/dp/039324931X https://www.amazon.com/Nomadland-Surviving-America-Twenty-Fi...
- 8y ago

wtdata 8y ago

My personal opinion: It comes a point in your life when you realize that responsibilities actually give a meaning to your life. Mostly responsibilities for other people - your family above all - and that you do depend on economic stability for that, which means owning your own house (or at least be well into its mortgage payment) and having a career or owning a real business (not some startup haemorrhaging money). The kind of lifestyle depicted here is just postponing what you should be really doing and making it more difficult in the future.

mdupin 8y ago

If you can't afford to buy a house, then by definition you're not "affluent." Many of the type of people profiled in this article can't afford to buy a house in their locales, and thus should not be labelled "affluent." The article should be called something like, "The Non-Indigent Homeless." Words matter.

sevensor 8y ago

Private quarters with shared kitchen and bathroom? We used to call these "rooming houses." They've been around since the industrial revolution if not longer. Every time I see an article about the strange new living circumstances being chosen by Millenials, it ends up being an article that's actually about the 40-year aberration that was America between 1960 and 2000. Edit: speling

mschuster91 8y ago

Funny enough: (mostly conservative-leaning, old) people complain that the young generation has less kids, has girst time sex much later in life etc., but they seem to ignore the cause: stuff like this. How can one have a relationship without having a space to live said relationship in? Call me a pessimist but this is going to hit societies hard in the next decades. When there are not enough young people to sustain pension systems, and the people in their 30s or 40s don't have a house, savings or any other asset to make up for not having a decent pension system...