Some San Francisco Tech Workers are Renting Cheap 'Bed Pods'

An anonymous reader shared this report from SFGate:Late last year, tales of tech workers paying $700 a month for tiny "bed pods" in downtown San Francisco went viral. The story provided a perfect distillation of SF's wild (and wildly expensive) housing market - and inspired schadenfreude when the city deemed the situation illegal. But the provocative living situation wasn't an anomaly, according to a city official. "We've definitely seen an uptick of these 'pod'-type complaints," Kelly Wong, a planner with San Francisco's code enforcement and zoning and compliance team, told SFGATE... Wong stressed that it's not that San Francisco is inherently against bed pod-type arrangements, but that the city is responsible for making sure these spaces are safe and legally zoned. So Brownstone Shared Housing is still renting one bed pod location - but not accepting new tenants - after citations for failing to get proper permits and having a lock on the front door that required a key to exit. And SFGate also spoke to Alex Akel, general manager of Olive Rooms, which opened up a co-living and co-working space in SoMa earlier this year (and also faced "a flurry of complaints.")"Unfortunately, we had complaints from neighbors because of foot traffic and noise, and since then we cut the number of people to fit the ordinance by the city," Akel wrote. Olive Rooms describes its space as targeted at "tech founders from Central Asia, giving them opportunities to get involved in the current AI boom." Akel added that its residents are "bringing new energy to SF," but that the program "will not accept new residents before we clarify the status with the city." In April, the city also received a complaint about a group called Let's Be Buds, which rents out 14 pods in a loft on Divisadero Street that start at $575 per month for an upper bunk. While this recent burst of complaints is new, bed pods in San Francisco have been catching flak for years... a company called PodShare, which rents - you guessed it - bed pods, squared itself away with the city and has operated in SF since 2019. Brownstone's CEO told SFGate"A lot of people want to be here for AI, or for school, or different opportunities." He argues that "it's literally impossible without a product like ours," and that their residents had said the option "positively changed the trajectory of their lives."

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