4 ms·

At first I thought that looked pretty bad, then I saw the price. ~740USD per month, and it’s enabling young single people who only earn $1800-2400/mo to live in

At first I thought that looked pretty bad, then I saw the price. ~740USD per month, and it’s enabling young single people who only earn $1800-2400/mo to live in the city near their jobs. Beyond just enabling lower income people a place to live, if you had dorms like that available in SF for $740/mo I think you’d have a long, long line of young tech workers signing up to move in. In the US, trading a very long commute for lower housing costs is widely understood and socially acceptable, I wonder why trading a tiny space for low rent and a short commute isn’t.

throwslkf4 7y ago
Trouble with Tokyo is not the rents - it's the absurd move-in charge (often running into 5-6 times the rent). You can generally find apartments for cheap (~$750) for either a shared house, or a full blown apartment with appliances. Trouble is that these apartments, though in Tokyo are often one train away from Yamanote, which makes the commute interesting. Of course, if you commute by bicycle, none of this matters.
MickerNews 7y ago
>In the US, trading a very long commute for lower housing costs is widely understood and socially acceptable, I wonder why trading a tiny space for low rent and a short commute isn’t. Because it's a race to the bottom. In EU society minimum standards of accommodation are socially acceptable. Allowing people to exploit the desperate to all possible extents is anathema to any humane values. Japan is already a caricature of extremist employee exploitation. It's not something to emulate. I wonder why such a basic observation of the situation isn't obvious to people "in the US".
- s_m_t 7y ago
  I'd gladly trade the shared 900sq ft I pay ~$400 to rent for something smaller but as far as I can tell I can't really rent anything cheaper in the entire united states. My roommate and I don't even know what to do with our living room. Spend money filling up a space we don't actually care about? Nah, we've just been collecting free shit to throw in there because we really don't care. Thanks for keeping me from being 'exploited' though.
  - MickerNews 7y ago
    There will always be someone who's happy to trade their self-respect for some immediate comfort. Should that mean that we always should choose that particular point as our baseline? Just because you can choose to tolerate some arbitrary shittiness, doesn't mean that everyone else in society should have to suffer your personal shithole.
    - s_m_t 7y ago
      hahaha wtf

throwslkf4 7y ago

Trouble with Tokyo is not the rents - it's the absurd move-in charge (often running into 5-6 times the rent). You can generally find apartments for cheap (~$750) for either a shared house, or a full blown apartment with appliances. Trouble is that these apartments, though in Tokyo are often one train away from Yamanote, which makes the commute interesting. Of course, if you commute by bicycle, none of this matters.

MickerNews 7y ago

>In the US, trading a very long commute for lower housing costs is widely understood and socially acceptable, I wonder why trading a tiny space for low rent and a short commute isn’t. Because it's a race to the bottom. In EU society minimum standards of accommodation are socially acceptable. Allowing people to exploit the desperate to all possible extents is anathema to any humane values. Japan is already a caricature of extremist employee exploitation. It's not something to emulate. I wonder why such a basic observation of the situation isn't obvious to people "in the US".

s_m_t 7y ago
I'd gladly trade the shared 900sq ft I pay ~$400 to rent for something smaller but as far as I can tell I can't really rent anything cheaper in the entire united states. My roommate and I don't even know what to do with our living room. Spend money filling up a space we don't actually care about? Nah, we've just been collecting free shit to throw in there because we really don't care. Thanks for keeping me from being 'exploited' though.
- MickerNews 7y ago
  There will always be someone who's happy to trade their self-respect for some immediate comfort. Should that mean that we always should choose that particular point as our baseline? Just because you can choose to tolerate some arbitrary shittiness, doesn't mean that everyone else in society should have to suffer your personal shithole.
  - s_m_t 7y ago
    hahaha wtf