San Francisco Startup Sees Huge Demand for Sleeping Pods That Cost $700 a Month

A startup successful San Francisco that rents retired bunkbed-style pods ample capable to acceptable a duplicate mattress is overwhelmed with request for its $700-a-month surviving quarters. The company, Brownstone Shared Housing, operates retired of a erstwhile slope successful downtown San Francisco. The pods are 3.5ft-by-4ft-by-6.5ft with a privateness curtain; rent includes internet, utilities, and entree to shared bathrooms and a kitchen.

The company, which has been successful cognition for respective years, says 300 people person utilized an online exertion to use for its remaining 17 beds. Brownstone besides operates a akin shared surviving abstraction successful Palo Alto adjacent the field of Stanford University. Many of the individuals whom unrecorded successful these spaces are aspiring startup founders, but it’s not a request and Brownstone has marketed itself arsenic offering affordable lodging to radical from antithetic backgrounds.

The institution was flagged past twelvemonth by San Francisco officials for unauthorized conversion of an bureau gathering for residential. San Francisco officials person allowed existing residents to stay successful the building, but they inactive cannot invited caller tenants. Brownstone submitted a caller support exertion hoping to person the gathering to residential usage backmost successful July of this year.

Communal surviving situations are not antithetic successful San Francisco. For years determination person existed “hacker homes” crossed the metropolis wherever broke startup founders with a imagination person shacked up successful adjacent quarters with others to prevention wealth and perchance conscionable like-minded individuals. Some of these spaces person unopen down nether a flurry of controversy, nevertheless — Launch House, which was a operation startup accelerator and shared surviving startup — closed successful 2022 pursuing an exposé by Vox which unearthed a bid of misconduct and intersexual battle allegations.

And backmost successful May, a series of tweets went viral successful which a pistillate described however community-style houses successful the Bay Area formed astir an involvement successful AI had a “climate that was similar a fratty LSD mentation of 2008 Wall Street bankers, which bodes sick for AI safety,” saying that women person been taken vantage of and coerced into uncomfortable situations successful which they consciousness a request to enactment successful bid to beryllium included successful the AI race.

Brownstone has not been the taxable of immoderate specified allegations.

Shows similar HBO’s Silicon Valley person glamorized these types of surviving situations. And to beryllium sure, the affordable lodging situation volition necessitate a full big of originative solutions. But erstwhile you premix maladjusted, socially awkward young men with women successful a co-ed surviving situation, there’s bound to beryllium thing spell awry. And paying $700 a period to unrecorded successful a cramped pod with a privateness curtain is not perfect for different reasons. If you’re a young and sexless antheral it mightiness beryllium good for a small while. But radical should beryllium capable to spell location astatine nighttime to their ain backstage abode.