“This is scalable,” said Williams, 28, a freelance electrical engineer. “I know a guy who has about 12 of these.”
What a scumbag.
Without it, I'd have to either live somewhere where I fear for my safety, add 1-2 hours of BART commute onto my workday (and lose easy access to SF restaurants/culture), or spend $2500-$4000 for a studio in a comparable neighborhood.
Downstairs, there are 2 bedrooms that could have easily held 2 twin beds each, and another small room that could have taken 1 twin bed.
As a single-family home it would have comfortably slept 7. It's probably 2-3x larger than my childhood home and would have fetched $750,000+ in the suburban Midwest.
Convert all those twins to bunk beds (as my landlord did) and you've got 10 people across the downstairs bedrooms. Replace the king-size bed with 2 bunk beds, you've got 4 beds in the space where 1 was. 14 people sleeping in the same amount of floor space that 7 previously occupied. Now take the vast empty floor space in the master bedroom and add 2 bunk beds, and you're at the 18 that I live with.
It doesn't feel crowded. It has the same drawbacks that any room-sharing situation has - you're never alone, you have to hear people breathe and snore and shift around in bed, there's no possibility of having sex (you can sexile one person - not 7), you have to smell people's smells. But it's no worse than living in a double in college, summer camp, etc. I had no chance of bringing a girl home anyway, the sounds are drowned out by the city/wind when you've got a window open, and everyone is polite and sensitive to the fact that we're sharing space.
A portion of that price also goes to Airbnb, which gives me trust/reputation, escrow, precisely the dates of stay I wanted, and no monthslong Craigslist game as is usually necessary to sublet in SF.
If you work near a BART station, it's a faster commute than many parts of SF.
It's clear that the downsides are minimal to you, and the upsides worth it. I understand that. But you're freaking crazy thinking you have to live 2 hours away to find more reasonable prices. There are hardly even 2 hour lines on BART. Ditto on the safety issue; just know what parts of Oakland to avoid and you're all set.
I wouldn't say it's his fault. He's not doing it for charity, sure, but it's not his fault that the prices are insane. He's not forcing people to live there.
People double their money where I live renting places for $350/bed. People either can't afford a whole place to themselves or don't want to risk the hassle of renting an entire place and subleasing it, so they rent, realizing their combined rent is making a profit for the owner. It's just arbitrage.
> He leases the bungalow from a Chinese venture capitalist for about $6,800
That is just insane.
Again, no one is forcing them to live there. They can come live where I do and get a three-bedroom house for $750/month, but they apparently want to live there. He gives them that chance.
If somebody gives people of misfortune a significantly cheaper option, which has its fair tradeoffs in delivered product, while still being profitable, I don't see much of a problem.
I don't think he's a 'scumbag' or profiting off of others misfortune. I was able to rent a place to crash for ~$150 less per day than a hotel would have cost and I had access to a full kitchen, washer/dryer, fast internet etc, which I wouldn't have had with a hotel.
This is the truly insane part.
It's also probably a more humane solution than the currently popular option - don't build anything at all.