Amazing how much a person can be conditioned into accepting a terrible situation. And no, there are ways to fix this, there is just no will to do so, partly because of the people who see nothing wrong with it.
Do you think it should be illegal to sell housing smaller than a certain minimum size? Do you think the price is too high? Do you think the location is awful?
A box is not a proper living condition. For a minimum wage worker, $700/month is basically at the limit of what they can afford for rent. And yet this is all they can get? And people are cheering for it?
Someone has a backpack full of belongings and that's all they need, many of these people don't even need a kitchen because they never cook. They're social, they want their days spent in shared spaces. How is this worse than a hostel?
I think the idea of "proper living condition" is as varied as the number of people you ask. I wouldn't live in one of these shared spaces, but I do live an equally unorthodox lifestyle and my housing situation would be considered inadequate by many, and I love it. I can understand why someone would want the minimum private space to sleep and a shared space bustling with activity and full of like minded people. As long as people have sanitation and aren't sharing diseases and bedbugs and what not I don't see a problem with any mode of living and sheltering, and that's what it really is all about, shelter.
If the housing situation in a place got so bad that a person has to pay nearly 1/3 of their monthly income just to get a closet to sleep in, it is not a livable place. A slum has a big mix of people but would you really consider it a great "metropolis" where you can have a life and raise a family?
Again, this is 1/3 of minimum wage for as much space as a closet. It is basically priced as high as it could to best exploit the poorest among us. Maybe it is a different in value between me and those who grew up in SF but I consider it inhumane to treat someone who is working full time like this. If you don't think so, let me ask you this: would you let your family, your spouse and your children, to live like this? In a box? Or would you do all you could to get them something better? Not everyone can do better than minimum wage, but it doesn't mean they deserve to live like this. That is what I mean.
There are solutions to the housing problem that is not this band aid on a festering wound. But it seems this kind of situation is perfectly fine to SF people. To which I have nothing else to say but amazement at how can a city priding itself on economic abundance and human right progress can also be utterly indifferent to the suffering of its fellows and even justifying it.
Also living in a dorm is not the hardship you seem to think it is. It’s better accommodations than 90% of people in history have ever lived. Watch Les Miserables for a reality check.
Better to direct anger at the landed gentry who made this possible.
Make no mistake, I see this as a terrible living situation. Just because some war time refugees 100 years ago lived worse doesn't mean one of the richest cities in the world should have the same. It is a terrible and dishonest comparison.
I've done a fair bit of backpacking with maybe even more annoying sleeping arrangements and it's great fun at times.
And we don’t have to go 100 years, still probably better than 50% of people living in the world today.
Entrenched property owners and landlords have an incentive to not se see this fixed for a reason and it will be San Francisco's downfall.
This is eye opening to me how the housing situation is viewed by the SF upper class. I have always considered it a dystopian nightmare when the workers have to sleep in a coffin and work full time. It seems not many people in SF share my view.
As to what he deserves, I think he deserves to decide for himself without other people second-guessing it, and also to be able to change his mind and do something else if it gets old.
It seems like you're going off-topic, since the article isn't about minimum wage workers in general. But to address that, yes, rents are very high in San Francisco and it's no place to try to live solely on a minimum wage.
Why do you think minimum wage workers should not be allowed to live in SF? If everyone is writing code, who would make the food? Who would deliver the packages? Who would clean the workspace in your office? They don't deserve a place to live near you even though they are providing you with all kind of services? Genuinely asking here because I can't fathom what you were saying when you said SF is not for minimum wage workers.
And this is from the article to which I quote:
>I need quite a jump, really, in all honesty, in order to be able to afford the traditional apartment here.
So yes, it is not the typical housing in SF, because it is born out of the dysfunctional "typical" ones and many people have no choice but to take it. I criticize the system that let the situation get to this point and the people who are so apathetic and disconnected they saw no problem with this "atypical" condition even when they acknowledge that it is not typical.
What I’m doing here is refusing to speculate. Yes, other people go off-topic and speculate all the time, but that doesn’t mean it’s useful.
It’s not particularly useful to speculate about other strangers who write comments on Hacker News, either. Are they apathetic or disconnected? Maybe, maybe not? I don’t know them.