Bunk bed is $1,200 a month, privacy not included | Hacker News Reader

Bunk bed is $1,200 a month, privacy not included

edition.cnn.com

23 pointstheriddlr66 comments

This reminds me of the coffin hotels in Neuromancer / one of the Gibson cyberpunk novels, although the real-life version is decidedly less cool (and probably more comfortable.)

In any case: if the cost was lower, I personally would find this somewhat appealing. A private bed and storage space in lower Manhattan for say, $400 a month, would actually be a decent deal. You'd have to be extremely minimalist, but that would be a feature and not a bug for the right audience. Add a VR system to each pod and you won't even notice the lack of space.

With some minor privacy/security tweaks, I agree. Most "coffin hotels" are better than this without consuming more space.

> A private bed and storage space in lower Manhattan for say, $400 a month

It would likely be similarly priced to the article, i.e. closer to $1200/month.

I think that's the real downside of things like this: They're offering a pretty steep discount compared to what it would cost to, say, rent a studio in lower manhattan, but not a steep enough discount that it would be affordable for someone making minimum wage.

It seems like a poor alternative to just having roommates and living in Crown Heights, is what I mean.

Judging from the image in the article, the space isn't very well-designed. Something like Japanese pod hotels are far more space efficient and would probably let you fit 10 pods in the space of two bunkbeds.

That would likely be illegal, for example in NYC an apartment must offer 80 feet of space for every tenant (so those 10 people would need to have a 800 sq ft apartment).

Sure, easy to skirt around if you're just an individual landlord, much less so if you're a company openly advertising it.

>Add a VR system to each pod and you won't even notice the lack of space

I think they probably would notice, on account of not being able to sit up, stand up, move their legs enough to simulate walking, move their arms more than a few inches...you get the idea.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy VR and think it's fun, but I don't understand how people get optimistic about its potential for palliating overcrowded conditions. VR doesn't literally let you inhabit a virtual space :)

I was thinking more of a Neuromancer-style VR, movement controlled with a joystick.

If this had a bit more satire to it, it could absolutely pass for a beaverton article.

Privacy means a lot to me. Assuming it's not winter time, I'd honestly prefer going home to my own tent in the forest over this.

I'm sure many people would, but there is a distinct lack of forests and camp grounds in downtown San Francisco. There's a reason you see these things popping up in big city centers as opposed to, say, the Buffalo Peaks wilderness area.

For the uninitiated, The Beaverton is a Canadian satire news site, similar to The Onion in the US.

Nah, it's totally different. It has beavers.

The midwest looks better every day.

The concept is not exactly new; it's basically a hostel. Maybe it was less common in North America until now?

They remind me of coffin apartments in Hong Kong albeit with communal areas.

Not at this price, though. A symptom of housing and job market dysfunction; do all the high-paying jobs really need to be co-located in the same few cities?

From the article :

> Although PodShare may seem a lot like a hostel (bunk beds in a shared room, for example), the company prefers to call it co-living.

Hostels are fairly common in major cities in North America. In the US, they usually run for about $50 a night. This place is similar in cost, really, but meant for longer-term residence. US hostels often restrict how long you can stay with them (a few weeks or a month.) I suppose that's to comply with housing laws.

It is a hostel but they use a fancy startup/VC vibe to sound cool.

You can make a reservation online for a single night for $40-$50. So yes it is a hostel. Same caveats as every hostel apply : reduced privacy, snoring, you can end up with indelicate people and you have to watch out for theft.

I went to a hostel that opened recently in France that looked very similar (no TV in the beds but a curtain you can close). In fact they also called the beds 'pods'. The difference is that it only cost 18€ a night.

Hostels aren't generally people's housing though they're temporary lodgings while travelling.

There are literally prison cells in some parts of the world that are more appealing than this...

Being able to walk outside seems like a plus. $40 a day for a bunk bed, tv, and food sounds very reasonable to me. And you can move around whenever you want.

Maybe if you can fit your life in a backpack. That's a serious limiter.

There are? Where.

Also, it doesn't matter. You can't leave prison. That's the main problem with it, not how poor or nice the finishes are.

Prisons at least allow visitors.

Prisons allow visitors because prisoners generally can't leave. It's a much better deal IMO to be able to leave but not have visitors come to you.

Have you ever actually visited someone in prison? I have and I'd say meeting up in a coffee shop is infinitely preferable. You can only go there during a specific time. You have to go through a long screening process that might involve taking off undergarments for inspection so you have to get there early. You awkwardly sit in a room with the inmate at a table being constantly watched. You only get a small amount of time with them. It's not really very "social."

Not in their pods, er I mean cells.

Scandinavian prisons look like a pretty good time.

Are those prison cells located in the center of a very desirable city though?

I could maybe see doing something like this if it was $300/month cheaper and each pod had a retractable door, almost like those Japanese capsule hotels. I get that in a space this small you aren't going to have much privacy, but to not have any sort of divider to block in the bed space seems over the top. Maybe the idea is that if people can close themselves off, they're more likely to do something like play their music too loud or watch stuff on their computer with the volume too high versus if there is no divider they'll be more conscientious?

Fire code, I assume.

You put a door on it, now it's a room, a bedroom at that which requires two exits in case of a fire.

Hang a curtain, it's just an overbuilt loft bed, furniture, invisible to the fire inspector.

I actually built a couple of "micro-cabin" prototypes that I was going to place on some land I have in Colorado near a couple of trail heads.

They were basically solar powered bunk-beds. Each "room" was 48"h x 54"w x 96"l, had a 36" "porch" and would have a locking door that used 4G to reset the code on check-in, a window, a mini heater, a foam mattress and a shelf. I never made it past building the prototype in my garage, but I've always loved the idea.

I turned down an internship in Palo Alto because the least expensive temporary (< 12 mo) housing I could find in the Bay area was a bunk in a "hacker shack" for ~$1k/month. The mortgage on my 4/2 house in Mississippi was <$500/mo. The person who offered me the job laughed when I told her about the wild discrepancy in costs of living and said several potential interns and employees over the years backed out for the same reasons.

The salary should have made up for the difference in cost of living.

I guess they don't feel like they need to pay more if they have a big pool of potential interns all willing to live in a hostel for $15k/year

How much extra for access to the maggot-burger dispensers?

I lived 3 months in Hong Kong in a cubicle bedroom of www.appledorm.com 4 years ago it costed something like 450 USD per month.

I remember (I want to say it was Google) who had a hand in some apartments where you at least got a bedroom.

I couldn't help but think that it's a system that encourages "young workaholics without any outside life (especially no families) need apply" kinda setup.

I do wonder if you're allowed to at least install a curtain...

Why is there no door on this? Wtf?

What once was old is new again.

The fad we call "co-living" today has been common for most of the nation's history. You can even see examples of it in old movies, books, and TV shows.

But now that it's got SVVC money behind it, it's somehow shiny and new.

Although the "pod" angle seems new, it's not. Though, it was almost exclusively for the very very poor in the past.

Now we can install cameras to track all of the tenant's movements, and play ads on those slick little monitors installed in the beds. We've come so far.

> What once was old is new again.

Does this also mean it is a "step down"? Because it looks like it is. Aren't we supposed to be better off than we used to - with all the efficiencies of market economy and technological progress that is...

We are way better off. Just live somewhere else. You can rent a nice house in Ohio for less than half that much [1].

Progress doesn't subvert the laws of supply and demand.

[1] https://cincinnati.craigslist.org/apa/d/cincinnati-stunning-...

And for me, $1200 a month is my entire mortgage payment, property taxes, insurance, and upkeep on a 1500 sqft house, in a pleasant neighborhood, surrounded by pleasant urban area. In an area that has a large number of corporate headquarters for companies that everyone has heard of, with access to a number of 6 figure jobs.

And whereabouts is that? When was your mortgage started? How much would it cost me if I was to buy a house like yours there right now for only 5% down, for example?

This is between the Milwaukee / Chicago corridor. In my case it is in Illinois about an hour north of Chicago, and the mortgage on my current house is 3 years old (bought for 162 K). In my case I put about 11% down, so I'm paying 100/month PMI, otherwise the monthly payment would be that much lower.

For a good idea of what housing is currently like around here, point something like Zillow or whatever in Lake County, look at Waukegan, Gurnee, the Chain of Lakes area, and if you want quite a bit cheaper you can go west a few more miles to McHenry County. Or for an area that is closer to urban, go north to Racine.

Now much of the housing in this price range (100 - 200K) is going to be older homes, however a lot of them are either well maintained (as there is a large blue-collar demographic here that is comfortable with DIY), and there is also plenty of new construction that you can get in that price range also.

Edit: just did a Zillow search, for all of Lake County IL, for single family homes 100 - 200K, and got 894 results. I added the keyword "as is" to the search, and only 139 of those have "as is" in the description.

Would you be kind and share at least country/state of that place?

> Does this also mean it is a "step down"? Because it looks like it is.

Why is living with other human beings considered a "step down"? Most people in this so called "modern" age are horribly lonely.

Its a step down because you are forced into it. 50 yrs ago you could decide to do it, now its pretty much decided for you.

But you aren't forced into it. Nobody is forcing people to live in expensive places like San Francisco. There are plenty of places in the USA where you can rent a nice house or apartment for very cheap. It might not be the most exciting or opportunity-filled area to live, though.

A key difference: I don't think it was as common to be "co-living" with complete strangers (though maybe I'm wrong on that).

Sharing a room with someone you're pretty familiar with is a much different experience.

I think that "co-living" spaces like this were common for factory worker-types around the industrial revolution, where you were with strangers rather than roommates, but my only source is that I vaguely remember hearing it on some podcast so take it with a grain of salt.

Ah fair, and I knew someone might bring that up :).

I meant more that I don't think that type of situation was common throughout history, more-so just for that time period for a certain group of people.

My impression is more that while families and groups of families might have cohabitated for long periods of time, it was a bit more rare for complete strangers to do so.

Um... College dorms are pretty common and that's coliving with (usually) a complete stranger.

Living in a college dorm isn't a common occurrence for most people for the majority of the nation's history.

I recently moved into a co-living space in Madrid and really enjoying it - I can see it becoming much more popular in the future. The social aspect for someone like me who moved to a new city is huge.

Living in a bunk is a different story - I've stayed in my fair share of hostels and honestly the worst part about a shared room is the snorers (even with ear plugs etc.)

Is it any different from having roommates and sharing a kitchen or bathroom

The co-living is split into 3 apartments per floor with 6 floors. People in each apartment (~6 people) share a kitchen.

The main difference to a regular apartment are the events in the building - yoga sessions, regular community dinners, weekly football matches, parties etc. Everyone in the building gets to know each other pretty quickly. Average age is about 29.

$1200/mo - bed, breakfast, and farts from the guy who loves garlic noodles and craft beer.

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I CAN NOT STAND the web anymore.

Yeah, the web is unusable at this point without an ad blocker IMO.

With uBlock Origin on Firefox I don't have any of that and it's down to 5.29 MB.

I can't test it at work, but I wonder what adding a Pi-hole winnows the bits down to.

It's a good test for your ad blocker though. I got none of those things you mention, so I guess it's working pretty well.

(I use AdGuard for Safari configured to use the EasyList lists.)

https://outline.com/cZ468j

They have a minimal text-only version that's much better: http://lite.cnn.io/en

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