Is there no way, to just take a normal residential building, tear everything down inside except for the exterior walls and fill it with japanese sleep coffins?
Even if zoning laws would forbid this- life should find a way as they say.
Even if zoning laws would forbid this- life should find a way as they say.
http://www.loopnet.com/california/san-francisco_apartment-bu...
2950 21st Street is 4900 square feet and costs $3M. Right now it's 4 x 1200 square foot apartments, which go for about $45/square foot. Yowzers, that's $4500/month.
Let's say you take each of the two floors and remodel them: two full bathrooms designed for shared tenancy, each coffin takes up 8 feet by 5 feet by 4 feet and you stack them two high, with 8 sqft of hallway and such added in. That's 48 sqft per coffin stack, so with perfect layout you get 100 coffin stacks. But you need room for bathrooms for 80+ people, and that means 8 stalls, 8 sinks, and 8 shower cubicles, taking up about 20% of the space. OK, your max occupancy is 80 where it used to be 16.
The good news: you can charge as little as $250/month. If you spend enough on insulation you won't need to spend much on heat in the winter, but ventilation is going to be a problem.
Nobody gets a parking space.
Lice will be a problem.
Cockroaches will be a problem.
However, the issue that will get you the status of first slumlord to be sentenced to life in prison is fire safety.
Also it doesent have to become slumy if its well organized. See the various capsule hotels in japan. If you up it to 300 $ you could have comon "living rooms".
More interesting is, how would hide this from the neighbours?
My suggestion: Have somebody drive a big truck into a garage regularly and basically be the shuttle service. Provide a set of two rooms near the front door - and a concierge actor using racism to provide a cover. Finally, a faked daily lightshow, behind the windows to provide the ilusion of ongoing normal life.
This stealth hotel really would be a "hacking" -challenge: Next problems would be water and sewer system.
Power supply and noiseless ventilation.
My suggestion- create many false positives, to desensitize residents eveywhere to loud air conditioning.
So for the hacked hostel to exist, one would need neighbours nearby who for money would allow a loudly humming installation (wifi-antenna) on there roof to exist.