The axiomatic idea behind the inception of Brownstone Shared Housing — an eight-month-old startup that bills itself as a “short-term solution for students or people working on temporary jobs” — is nothing novel or awe-inspiring. “Pod-living” and dormitory-style room rentals have grown into financial fodder across the Bay Area over the past decade.
In 2015, it wasn’t uncommon to see spaces that measured no bigger than a walk-in closet renting for over $1,100 a month on craigslist. Comparatively, this was also the time when cramped community living corridors (that read more like incarceration units than actual spaces to comfortably exist) began popping up across the Bay Area.
To this day, the notion of $1,200-plus bunk beds being rented out to people desperate for realistically affordable housing remains a pressing truth.
(Mind you: Most financial experts still agree to allocate no more than 30% of your net income on housing, which allows for a healthy buffer zone to pay for miscellaneous bills, various debts, food, retirement, and occasionally frivolous spending. As of 2022, the average San Francisco earner makes about $72,000 a year, before taxes. After those wagers are deducted from federal, state, and local levels, it leaves roughly $4,100 left on the table a month — with a little over $1,300 of that being able to responsibly go toward housing, per the previously mentioned financial model.)
Brownstone Shared Housing’s South Bay home, which can accommodate 14 people in a domicile with just two bathrooms and a single kitchen, isn’t innovative. It’s a dangerous normalization of the housing crisis at hand.
Article source: https://thebolditalic.com/these-800-a-month-bay-area-pods-area-just-glorified-coffin-homes-2056a4dd2c43