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Comment by gmarx | Hacker News Reader

So they are building too much luxury housing which normally would cause prices to go down but fortunately a startup is making it easier to pack people in like college students or illegal migrants? Wonderbar.

If I rented a "luxury" apartment by myself and found I was living next door to 5-10 people crammed into one place I'd be pretty angry.

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Isn't this just the "hacker house" thing all over again, except using a corporation instead of listing on Airbnb?

People straight out of college who have friends already live three, four, five people to a one to three bedroom apartment in SF because of the insane housing prices, even when they're making 105k/year. Heck, when I went to take a tour of one luxury apartment building and told them that I'd maybe come back if I could find roommates so I could afford it, the leasing agent called me that afternoon with a lead on a prospective roommate that worked at the same company. (To them, it's just closing another sale...)

I don't think so. The reason being that it sounds like they are still adhering to standard fire codes and occupancy limits to be in full compliance with the law so it's building owner friendly. For a 2 bedroom, it's probably packed with 4 roommates, the company just helps make the living space more amenable to that setup vs. the awkward college dorm / no privacy situation. It's possible in a 2-bedroom you could have up to 6 people (by converting living room to a 3rd bedroom) which this facilitates as well. The cool part is that you get all the community benefits as part of your package which at these high end condos/apartments usually include gyms, swimming pools, etc.

These luxury towers are shitholes. They're run like hotels, the property managers are complete pricks, and things are broken constantly. I don't know why anyone would think quick-build apartments from cheap developers would be luxury anything but I guess people are easily fooled these days.

40 years later and the kids just never learn...

http://www.theverge.com/2013/11/4/5063258/ponte-tower-africa...

Oh but that would never happen here, Bay Area landlords and developers are all on the up and up, yada yada...

Full disclosure: I lived in a great little 3-bedroom in the mission from 1999-2001 where we each paid $650. And it was fuckinh awesome. The place "mysteriously" burned down a few years later, coincidentally releasing the owner from rent control. Who'd a thunk it?

It is not 5-10 people.

It is 3-5 in a 2 bed apartment.

This is extremely common in SF and is perfectly legal.

3-5 to start ;)

Why the heck would that make you angry? What's it to ya?

If each floor has 20 units and there's 10 people per unit, that's 200 people on one floor -- that's a lot of wait time for the elevator (which was sized for typical occupancy, not 5 people per bedroom), extra foot traffic, overflowing trash cans, parking/traffic issues, running out of hot water (if it's shared), overuse of shared/common areas, much higher resident turnover, etc.

Though in this case, the company isn't cramming people in that tightly, so it's not an issue.

plus all the guests that will be coming through (who have even less incentive to respect standards of quiet and order).

So they overuse the shared resources - the other poster mentioned elevators, but also gym, parking, etc etc.

But also the more people, the higher the odds that there's one of them that just has to do whatever obnoxious thing - like smoke, make noise at all hours, etc etc. Nobody agrees on whose responsibility taking out the trash it is so it piles up and smells.

Vetting can reduce but not eliminate that.

Nobody wants to be next to the "Frat apartment" that is always partying at 2AM on a weeknight.

exactly. I've been in that situation. It sucks

Thanks for explaining, I didn't even think of shared resources since I've never lived in such a place (and find the idea odd -- wouldn't it be safer, providing more choice, NOT to get all your services from one provider?)

Shouldn't a luxury place have good walls in place to avoid noise though? Seems like a luxury place that doesn't do this is kind of a scam.

Things like elevators and hallways are really pretty basic, and not subject to choice. But then, many people choose to live in detached houses so they don't have to rely on cooperating with neighbors for anything (I guess there are always shared civic resources, like water/sewer/streets, but you get the idea).

I honestly don't know when it comes to walls. I've asked at a bunch of places and the answer seems to be a variant of "they're normal, I guess?"

Your neighbors having a small house party with ~10 people over, a few drinks, some music is one thing. It's when it becomes very big and/or intoxicated event that it becomes a huge pain.

People barfing in the stairwells, physically running into the walls, ringing the neighbor's doorbell at 2am because they can't figure out where they're going (or need to lean on it to keep from collapsing). My last apartment was next to a perpetual AirBnB where these kind of things were sometimes a problem (probably < 5 % of the tenants, but 1 out of 20 nights of noise at all hours still sucks)

My current apartment does not have these issues. I still have the sirens and motorcycles of a very busy street to deal with, but earplugs deal with that well enough to leave the windows open at night.

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