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Why would somebody working from home live in a tiny apartment downtown? Successful WFH requires a dedicated private office, which is something you’ll never see

Why would somebody working from home live in a tiny apartment downtown? Successful WFH requires a dedicated private office, which is something you’ll never see in a downtown apartment. Downtown areas are screwed. There is no point living downtown if you don’t also work there. All those people who lived downtown are now gonna contribute to suburban sprawl. That of if they are junior, will just be working from their parents house.

cultofmetatron 4y ago
there are plenty of reasons to live downtown. maybe there will be more coffeeshops and coworking spaces. I'm in Barcelona right now but whether here, medellin, bangkok etc, there is a huge demographic of educated workers who like livign in the city area but wan the freedom to walk around a beautiful economically diverse environment. I for one wouldn't mind a apartment where I can walk to a number of parks and cafes and social areas. The problem in SF is one found all over america. we don't have have proper third places. The closest thing I have to a hangout whenever i'm back stateside is the gym or starbucks.
- mathverse 4y ago
  Co-working spaces are really really nice but I suspect they will prove to be just an eccentric, boutique-like, expensive things that companies actually hate to use. Vast majority of them would prefer to sign a lease for 7y for a building instead of overpaying for a small space with nicer interior. The reality is that companies really want assembly lines for office workers.
- spookthesunset 4y ago
  So now to work from home I’m a dense urban environment I have to find a coworking space? That sounds a lot like an office, only one with random people and no place to safely leave my laptop when I take a piss? Seriously, why would anybody live in a tiny downtown flat if they either work from home or have to find a half-assed “office that isn’t an office but isn’t at my cramped alartmen? It makes no sense.. WFH requires a big house with a comfortable private office. The amount of people willing to live in a sense urban environment and somehow manage to work outside a formal office is incredibly small. WFH is a suburban developers wet dream.
  - Larrikin 4y ago
    WFH does not need an executive level suite. That is just your preference. I'm currently staying with a friend for a month in a 1k (1 room plus a kitchen) apartment in Tokyo and it's been surprisingly easy to adjust to a smaller desk and one extra monitor from my WFH setup stateside with three on a much bigger desk. If I was permanently living here I'd opt for a simple 2k or higher like I used to have which was easily affordable as a couple on mediocre salaries and definitely affordable on a dev salary. Probably could get a nicer place than I used to have and recreate my US based setup. My friends location has dozens of restaurants of basically every type, even more bars, multiple grocery stores, and various other services I won't need for a visit but would use in daily life like dentists and gyms. That's also ignoring the ten minute walk to multiple train lines to the whole of Tokyo that gives me access to nearly anything you'd ever want to do in a city. A smaller space is definitely a worthwhile trade-off millions of people elected to live and work in. I'd say it's a very easy choice when the city is built around people with things to do within walking distance and good public transportation, instead of planning for cars and Lyft transportation. Ignoring NIMBYs and allowing large amounts of housing to be built also keeps rents from becoming the silliness that they became in SF. If you go the opposite way in Tokyo and elect for a smaller place (perhaps because you work at a restaurant and don't WFH and are fine using the various amenities Tokyo offers outside your home) it's possible to live in basically the various hearts of Tokyo on a solidly middle of the road salary. The smaller space only becomes an issue when people have kids and start a family, when some percentage moves to the suburbs. However, not everyone because rents in a bigger place are expensive, but once again not insane. But you were complaining about WFH not being luxurious enough outside of a detached home. American cities could reinvent themselves after the mass exodus of people leaving down town offices. I don't think most will, but it's definitely possible with the right planning
- clpm4j 4y ago
  The thing about SF is that every neighborhood has its own "downtown" in the form a primary commercial street with coffee shops, grocery stores, small businesses, etc i.e. everything someone working from home might need. Also, nearly every neighborhood has at least one park that is accessible and walkable. When people say "downtown SF" they're referring to the eastern/northeastern part of the city with all of the office buildings which is ironically the part of the city with the worst selection of coffee shops, food, parks, etc. so there is really close to zero reason for people to want to be there. Working from home in NOPA, Inner Richmond, Haight, Duboce, Noe, etc etc is quite nice and also very walkable and convenient.
  - spookthesunset 4y ago
    Is there enough coffee shops and park benches in that part of SFO to support even a small fraction of the 160,000 people who used to walk/bike/bus to their former office? Or are we all gonna now have to rent an extra bedroom in order to live downtown? Is my employer gonna pay for this new pseudo office or did my cost of living just go way up? Cause I ain’t working on the kitchen table or in my kids room. I have almost three years of experience to tell you how much that doesn’t work.
    - alephnerd 4y ago
      If you have kids you don't live in SF. Plain and simple. It's too expensive to raise a family in the city so it ends up being a handful of very rich old money types who send their kids to elite private schools like Covenant & Stuart or the children of refugees, legal, and illegal immigrants from Central America, Asia, and the Middle East (large Yemeni population in TL) who end up in shithole SFUSD schools Most people in the wfh demographic in SF are either DINKs or Yuppies
ryukafalz 4y ago
Coworking spaces exist, and lots of people like having places to go nearby when they finish work. Not everyone wants to live far away from everything. Cities will be fine.
- spookthesunset 4y ago
  There already are coworking spaces. They are called the offices of your employer. They are safe to leave laptops at. Your actual coworkers are also there. You have free rein of the building. You also don’t have to pay to use them… your employer does. So you are saying I now have to pay for a mediocre co-working space out of my own pocket to be successful working in a tiny apartment downtown?
monero-xmr 4y ago
I live in a major urban area, and have compromised on certain things, despite the ability to live in a giant suburban house. I like cities, I like the restaurants and bars, the music venues, the amenities, my kids play at the parks, there are tons of private schools which means we have a lot of choice, and on and on. The suburbs are where you go to eat Applebees on Friday night and go to bed by 9pm. Just not for my family. I also WFH in a fully remote company.
kitsunesoba 4y ago
As someone who moved from SF to suburbs elsewhere during the pandemic, I enjoy city life, but with the cost of housing there it just didn’t add up any more between reduced capacity to safely partake in the boons of a city thanks to covid and the reduced sense of safety and the stress that induces. If it cost somewhere between a third and a fourth as much as it did when I left and that cost remained relatively static, I would’ve probably stayed, but there’s no chance that would happen in reality and so I moved. If this were Tokyo we were speaking about rather than SF, the cost would be trivial to justify even in a remote work situation. The perks handily outweigh the downsides. I don’t mind paying but the quality of the experience needs to meet a certain bar for the price to make sense.
asoneth 4y ago
I also did not like living in a city, but it is clear from prices that people are willing to pay a premium to live in major metro areas like Sydney, London, Paris, Amsterdam, New York, etc even in the post-pandemic work-from-anywhere world. Even in smaller cities the downtown areas seem to be doing just fine based on rent and occupancy. I suspect the deeper problem is with San Francisco and similar cities that became more of a desirable place to work than a desirable place to live. When business is good the city does well, but when the businesses leave or go under people have no other reason to stick around given all the other negatives. To give an example, my NYC friends moved there to be in NYC and only look for jobs that let them stay in NYC. Whereas my Bay Area friends primarily moved there because that's where they got the highest offers after college, and most of them would move (or already have moved) elsewhere if a better offer comes around.

cultofmetatron 4y ago

there are plenty of reasons to live downtown. maybe there will be more coffeeshops and coworking spaces. I'm in Barcelona right now but whether here, medellin, bangkok etc, there is a huge demographic of educated workers who like livign in the city area but wan the freedom to walk around a beautiful economically diverse environment. I for one wouldn't mind a apartment where I can walk to a number of parks and cafes and social areas. The problem in SF is one found all over america. we don't have have proper third places. The closest thing I have to a hangout whenever i'm back stateside is the gym or starbucks.

mathverse 4y ago
Co-working spaces are really really nice but I suspect they will prove to be just an eccentric, boutique-like, expensive things that companies actually hate to use. Vast majority of them would prefer to sign a lease for 7y for a building instead of overpaying for a small space with nicer interior. The reality is that companies really want assembly lines for office workers.
spookthesunset 4y ago
So now to work from home I’m a dense urban environment I have to find a coworking space? That sounds a lot like an office, only one with random people and no place to safely leave my laptop when I take a piss? Seriously, why would anybody live in a tiny downtown flat if they either work from home or have to find a half-assed “office that isn’t an office but isn’t at my cramped alartmen? It makes no sense.. WFH requires a big house with a comfortable private office. The amount of people willing to live in a sense urban environment and somehow manage to work outside a formal office is incredibly small. WFH is a suburban developers wet dream.
- Larrikin 4y ago
  WFH does not need an executive level suite. That is just your preference. I'm currently staying with a friend for a month in a 1k (1 room plus a kitchen) apartment in Tokyo and it's been surprisingly easy to adjust to a smaller desk and one extra monitor from my WFH setup stateside with three on a much bigger desk. If I was permanently living here I'd opt for a simple 2k or higher like I used to have which was easily affordable as a couple on mediocre salaries and definitely affordable on a dev salary. Probably could get a nicer place than I used to have and recreate my US based setup. My friends location has dozens of restaurants of basically every type, even more bars, multiple grocery stores, and various other services I won't need for a visit but would use in daily life like dentists and gyms. That's also ignoring the ten minute walk to multiple train lines to the whole of Tokyo that gives me access to nearly anything you'd ever want to do in a city. A smaller space is definitely a worthwhile trade-off millions of people elected to live and work in. I'd say it's a very easy choice when the city is built around people with things to do within walking distance and good public transportation, instead of planning for cars and Lyft transportation. Ignoring NIMBYs and allowing large amounts of housing to be built also keeps rents from becoming the silliness that they became in SF. If you go the opposite way in Tokyo and elect for a smaller place (perhaps because you work at a restaurant and don't WFH and are fine using the various amenities Tokyo offers outside your home) it's possible to live in basically the various hearts of Tokyo on a solidly middle of the road salary. The smaller space only becomes an issue when people have kids and start a family, when some percentage moves to the suburbs. However, not everyone because rents in a bigger place are expensive, but once again not insane. But you were complaining about WFH not being luxurious enough outside of a detached home. American cities could reinvent themselves after the mass exodus of people leaving down town offices. I don't think most will, but it's definitely possible with the right planning
clpm4j 4y ago
The thing about SF is that every neighborhood has its own "downtown" in the form a primary commercial street with coffee shops, grocery stores, small businesses, etc i.e. everything someone working from home might need. Also, nearly every neighborhood has at least one park that is accessible and walkable. When people say "downtown SF" they're referring to the eastern/northeastern part of the city with all of the office buildings which is ironically the part of the city with the worst selection of coffee shops, food, parks, etc. so there is really close to zero reason for people to want to be there. Working from home in NOPA, Inner Richmond, Haight, Duboce, Noe, etc etc is quite nice and also very walkable and convenient.
- spookthesunset 4y ago
  Is there enough coffee shops and park benches in that part of SFO to support even a small fraction of the 160,000 people who used to walk/bike/bus to their former office? Or are we all gonna now have to rent an extra bedroom in order to live downtown? Is my employer gonna pay for this new pseudo office or did my cost of living just go way up? Cause I ain’t working on the kitchen table or in my kids room. I have almost three years of experience to tell you how much that doesn’t work.
  - alephnerd 4y ago
    If you have kids you don't live in SF. Plain and simple. It's too expensive to raise a family in the city so it ends up being a handful of very rich old money types who send their kids to elite private schools like Covenant & Stuart or the children of refugees, legal, and illegal immigrants from Central America, Asia, and the Middle East (large Yemeni population in TL) who end up in shithole SFUSD schools Most people in the wfh demographic in SF are either DINKs or Yuppies

ryukafalz 4y ago

Coworking spaces exist, and lots of people like having places to go nearby when they finish work. Not everyone wants to live far away from everything. Cities will be fine.

spookthesunset 4y ago
There already are coworking spaces. They are called the offices of your employer. They are safe to leave laptops at. Your actual coworkers are also there. You have free rein of the building. You also don’t have to pay to use them… your employer does. So you are saying I now have to pay for a mediocre co-working space out of my own pocket to be successful working in a tiny apartment downtown?

monero-xmr 4y ago

I live in a major urban area, and have compromised on certain things, despite the ability to live in a giant suburban house. I like cities, I like the restaurants and bars, the music venues, the amenities, my kids play at the parks, there are tons of private schools which means we have a lot of choice, and on and on. The suburbs are where you go to eat Applebees on Friday night and go to bed by 9pm. Just not for my family. I also WFH in a fully remote company.

kitsunesoba 4y ago

As someone who moved from SF to suburbs elsewhere during the pandemic, I enjoy city life, but with the cost of housing there it just didn’t add up any more between reduced capacity to safely partake in the boons of a city thanks to covid and the reduced sense of safety and the stress that induces. If it cost somewhere between a third and a fourth as much as it did when I left and that cost remained relatively static, I would’ve probably stayed, but there’s no chance that would happen in reality and so I moved. If this were Tokyo we were speaking about rather than SF, the cost would be trivial to justify even in a remote work situation. The perks handily outweigh the downsides. I don’t mind paying but the quality of the experience needs to meet a certain bar for the price to make sense.

asoneth 4y ago

I also did not like living in a city, but it is clear from prices that people are willing to pay a premium to live in major metro areas like Sydney, London, Paris, Amsterdam, New York, etc even in the post-pandemic work-from-anywhere world. Even in smaller cities the downtown areas seem to be doing just fine based on rent and occupancy. I suspect the deeper problem is with San Francisco and similar cities that became more of a desirable place to work than a desirable place to live. When business is good the city does well, but when the businesses leave or go under people have no other reason to stick around given all the other negatives. To give an example, my NYC friends moved there to be in NYC and only look for jobs that let them stay in NYC. Whereas my Bay Area friends primarily moved there because that's where they got the highest offers after college, and most of them would move (or already have moved) elsewhere if a better offer comes around.