Housing costs have become so expensive in some cities that people are renting bunk beds in a communal home for $1,200 a month. Not a bedroom. A bed.
PodShare is trying to help make up for the shortage of affordable housing in cities like San Francisco and Los Angeles by renting dormitory-style lodging and providing tenants a co-living experience.
— CNN
In the last few years, we have written stories on recent trends in compromised living situations designed in response to severe economic conditions, such as tiny homes and micro-apartments. While these living types are challengingly small - some as compact as 100 square feet - they still offer privacy, an amenity that most would find a basic necessity.
Co-living habitations, however, are quickly becoming a third alternative to the increasingly high cost-of-living in some of the world's most expensive cities. While companies like WeLive have tossed around the idea, a recently developed company has developed a much more extreme version. For $1,200 a month, PodShare will provide renters little more than a twin-sized mattress with as many as 220 other guests. According to CNN, the amenities are limited to "a bed, a locker, access to wifi and the chance to meet fellow 'pod-estrians.'" The concept is quickly picking up steam, as there are now six locations between Los Angeles and San Francisco, and they all typically receive full occupancy.
The PodShare living situation is akin to that of a hostel during one's travels. Anyone who has ever had to choose between a hotel and a hostel while traveling knows the value of a little privacy; one's choice can be the difference between a full room to one's own, including a desk, a bathroom and other basic amenities, and a bed in a room shared with a large group, guaranteeing an absolute lack of privacy and exclusive rights to certain amenities. On top of that, renters must agree to strict rules; guests are not allowed, lights must be out by 10pm each night, and any amenities left out are recognized as communal property.
PodShare was created in 2012 by 34-year-old Elvina Beck, herself a resident in one of the San Francisco locations. Beck conceived of PodShare as an alternative to the 'limitations' presented by lease agreements in more typical living situations, in favor of a free-spirited, nomadic lifestyle. "The goal is to empower the global citizen and live anywhere across the world for one monthly price," Beck told CNN. "A $1,000 a month [membership] should get you a chance to live from here to Taiwan back to Boston. You cover the flight and we'll cover the housing. It's all included."
While many if its tenants review it positively, many others have criticized PodShare and other co-living solutions as demonstrations of a failed housing market and economic system.
Capitalists: Socialism is bad because apartments in socialist nations like East Germany or USSR were so small, ugly and drab you don’t wanna live there
Also capitalists: pay $1000 to live on a pile of other humans https://t.co/WN8tsIgdYZ
— friedrice engels (@asianbabyghoul) July 6, 2019
Capitalism is a failed system. The capitalist class needs to be abolished and the power of self actualization needs to be spread among the working class. How am I to design buildings knowing I have to curtail my design to that of singular parasites of society? Why can I not design to the community at large? Because capitalism till commit genocide all over the world to stop us. The people deserve better
What is this word vomit?
All 14 Comments
Capitalism is a failed system. The capitalist class needs to be abolished and the power of self actualization needs to be spread among the working class. How am I to design buildings knowing I have to curtail my design to that of singular parasites of society? Why can I not design to the community at large? Because capitalism till commit genocide all over the world to stop us. The people deserve better
You are very dumb.
Wimpy men in skinny jeans talking about overthrowing capitalism and seizing property. Lmfao.
So Mark, who will and how will this capitalist "class" be abolished? Also, you can design to whatever community ideal you want, if you're the one paying for it. Otherwise, you're working for a client.
Also Mark, your twitter feed if fucking hilarious... but not in the good type of dumpster fire way.
I can’t find it non. A ton of stuff about Jean Claude van damme just comes up when I google the name. Wait a minute...is Jean Claude Van Damme gonna beat up all the capitalists and take their money and give it to gooder people? Huh? Is he gonna do those multiple roundhouse kicks like in “blood sport” and steal our houses? I sure hope Chuck Norris comes to the rescue.
^#mtvandamme1. A far cry from the muscles from Brussels unfortunately..
Lmfao. No way. That twitter page is crazy.
Featured? Really?
“Capitalists: Socialism is bad because apartments in socialist nations like East Germany or USSR were so small, ugly and drab you don’t wanna live there”
Wow, are kids really this stupid? Drab apartments, 100 million dead, extreme oppression, and no avocado toast. Like what was so bad?
Why is it that the failures in Socialist Authoritarian countries are always blamed on socialism, but the failures in Capitalist Authoritarian countries are blamed on Authoritarianism?
Because socialism always leads to authoritarianism. It’s a necessary feature of resource redistribution. You need authority backed by threat of violence to take the fruits of peoples labor.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authoritarian_capitalism
And the examples are almost always countries that were at one point communist or theocratic and have adopted capitalism into already authoritarian regimes like China, Russia, etc....capitalism is directly in contrast to state authoritarianism because it promotes freedom of speech, expression, moment through ordained hierarchies
. Not to say that eventually monopolies can merger with states and become authoritarian.
*movement through culturally or state ordained hierarchy (cast systems, loyalty classes like in North Korea, etc)
I was thinking more along the lines of Saudi Arabia, Israel, Philippines...
It’s a scale. Authoritarian regimes are threatened by free markets. As a regime becomes more authoritarian they will limit market freedom, not expand it. Durete certainly will, Saudi kingdom certain has. China certainly does. Capitalism is by its nature anti authoritarian.
The Anomaly is Singapore. They have pretty high economic freedom and a pretty authoritarian govt. usually either authoritarianism will lessen as capitalism gains hold, or Viva versa, it’s unstable, but Singapore seems to be an outlier.
I’ve been reading a bit about these pods. this is a good idea. This is how housing adapts to changing economies.
No it's a result of a market failure due to NIMBY over-regulation of housing construction in a booming American metropolis.
Agree, but this is an adaptation to that.
In the way that hopping on one foot is an adaptation to a broken leg. It doesn't solve the problem. Hence it's not a "good idea"
But if goal is to get from point a-b, and you have a broken leg, hopping on one foot is better than laying down and twiddling thumbs.
Yes, it's a stopgap but not a solution.
A disconnect is being exposed here. On one hand, it is claimed that technology allows remote work "from anywhere" and yet people have to pile into certain locations and live in these ridiculous conditions. Meanwhile, a vast amount of buildings in flyover country USA lie vacant.
No one “has to” live there.
I rather live in a platenbau then in one of these pods.
No one is stopping you.
I know- I am just stating what I rather have- and that is a platenbau apartment then a bunk bed.
What major city isn’t facing accelerated housing costs? These specifically are offered in Los Angeles and San Francisco, not exactly places known for their hostility to progressive politics.
puhlease.
https://www.utopi.as/vest-packet-utopia
Have your utopia, just keep it off my fucking lawn.
Ugh, that link was wrong one...too busy sparking this L and blasting Queen to find the correct one...Kids need to look up “pocket utopia”, a concept presented by Colin Rowe in Collage City. Good
read.
my mortgage is less... and I have spare rooms.
Build some bunks and rent them bro. You can fit at lest 4 millennials in a spare bedroom...that’s 4800$ a month :)
That’s the idea. I’ll even charge them in American dollars so they get the full experience.
Free can of tuna on move in day?
gotta stay competitive with other PodShare companies.
I too live elsewhere.
anyone paying that much to live in a bunk bed is a sucker. there’s plenty of reasonably priced spaces if you are willing to take the train. Otherwise you are just driving up prices in order to live in the middle of downtown
Two issues here.
One is communal living, the very basis of humanity, which modern culture has utterly destroyed.
The other is the capitalization of the illusion of community living, which is really just temporary housing for a transient population.
All communal living is capitalized. Whether via monetary abstraction (modern capitalism), or direct participation in some labor role (agrarian/hunter gatherer). Even tribal societies apply a cost to being part of a community. Freeloaders are not welcomed in any communal living spaces. The difference in modern society, is that it is impractical to have a system where members of a community pay their way with labor, largely because of the specialized nature of the modern world. Rather than use labor to grow avocados for their community’s toast, they work at Starbucks, and pool money to buy avocados from large scale avocado farms. Their contributions are outsourced, and then brought back into their communal spaces. The distinction you note is not about capitalism, it’s about the centralization of production.
Capitalism isn’t the “new” thing. Capitalism has existed as long as humans have existed. Trading cattle for bags of grain is capitalism. Socialism and communism are the “new” things that have failed over and over again because of the fact that they are not compatible with human nature. May work great for ants, bees, and other eusocial creatures, but us humans thrive on traversing hierarchies through resource accumulation, unique talents/skills, or superior ability to bullshit (Jim Jones, the Church, Hubbard, etc). We love that shit. It’s rock and roll baby.
I think people often criticize "capitalism" but mean to criticize "financialization", which is different.
^and corporatism.
indeed
"Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their operation for profit." When profit is defined as financial return then human health and well being, the environment, etc., are only relevant to the degree that they effect profit.
Thus we have U$A, where the top three families have more wealth than half the population and where life expectancy is plummeting, infant mortality skyrocketing, and homelessness is rampant.
But hey, profits are great!
life expectancy is nearly double what it was a century ago, infant mortality declined greater than 90%, maternal mortality declined greater than 99%, extreme poverty is almost eradicated, and homelessness rates vary greatly by location. Furthermore, the wealth gap you love to cite is true, but an overall terrible metric. A better metric is how poor people are living, and compared to a century ago, and other countries, poor Americans have a standard of living that is very very high. Like all religions,
reality is often much different.
And, let’s not forget the Environment. It’s not good, but the socialist countries are just as bad. We been ruining the earth since at least the ice age when we hunted mammoths into extinction. To narrowly tie environmental degradation to capitalism is ahistorical.
Humans are good at extracting more resources than we need for basic survival. And our thirst for comfort keeps increasing as does our population. That’s why the environment
is a wreck.
Compared to a century ago: better. Compared to two decades ago: worse.
What changed?
Two decades ago was 1999. Are we worse off now than in 1999? I really don’t see it. Lots of hyperbole, not much fact. There are ups and downs. The 70s had troubles, bounced back in the 90s....so what. Crime waves drop and rise for all sorts of reasons. Overall long term trends are what I’m talking about, and undeniably capitalism has overall greatly improved all of the above every where it’s been. Anti capitalist rhetoric is anti freedom rhetoric.
Capital has provided the greatest increases in quality of life in places where it's been heavily regulated and progressively distributed.
Your continued insistence that capitalism and socialism are incompatible binaries is frustratingly naive.
Social programs can exist alongside capitalism, within the framework of a capitalist nation, but socialism as a philosophy is incompatible with capitalism and liberty. Economic and Social liberty cannot exist within the framework of a socialist nation. See China.
My worry is not that we are more willingly adopting social programs, it’s that we are beginning to adopt more socialist rhetoric and philosophy. The university is the epicenter of this. It’s spreading out into politics and culture.
The far left doesn’t just want to adopt social programs....they want to realign the foundational philosophy of the nation. Classical liberalism itself is under attack. I spend time trying
To debate this garbage online, because I understand that socialism as a philosophy is oppressive and destructive.
Eh, I don't see it.
See the featured comment! LMFAO.
This is kind of a serious downgrade from college dorms that most of us fled to rent rooms in private homes as soon as we could get out.
I miss the liberals from a decade or two ago. They said things like “I don’t support what you say, but would die for your right to say it”. They were all about ending war. Fun and freedom. Not uptight. Legalize weed. Wtf happened. God damn Russians. Now they are promoting violence and communism. Strange times. Oddly, at the same time the conservatives were trying to ban books, curtail speech, impose religious nonsense. Seems like the liberals joined a cult. Good thing they are just wimpy soft crybabies. Their cry’s of revolution are very very low threat. They don’t have what it takes. Hands are too soft. Belly too full.
What is this word vomit?
Check out that skinny guys Twitter. First comment. A growing infection on the left.
No it isn't.
The ramblings of outliers do not define a movement just because you want to discredit the movement.
do you extend the same line of thinking for the right?
Yes.
The inequality of course is that the insane ramblings on the right all too frequently come from elected officials and party leadership. Sean Hannity has a direct line to the white house. Cenk Uygur, less so.
Remember me?
https://www.google.com/amp/s/beta.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2017/11/07/lessons-from-a-century-of-communism/%3foutputType=amp
Communism is for pigs.
Marxism =/= Communism
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