Bay Area housing startup offers sleeping pods for $800 a month

In the latest indication that the U.S. housing lack is achieving crisis concentrations, a Bay Region startup is presenting bunk-bed type pods at $800 a thirty day period for up to 14 folks to are living in a one residence.

Brownstone Shared Housing, an 8-month-outdated startup, costs by itself as a quick-term option for pupils or folks performing on short-term careers.  

Its Palo Alto dwelling houses 14 people today in a household with two bathrooms, a kitchen area and abundant communal spaces. For $800 a thirty day period, inhabitants of the residence, which is shut to the Stanford campus, get utilities, internet, a work-from-home house and entry to a sleeping pod.

Every pod steps 8 ft tall and arrives with a constructed-in lover, electrical lighting, a fold-down desk and charger for electrical devices. The pods are stacked two tall and have curtains that close for privateness.

The internet reacted viscerally to the pods just after an Insider article this 7 days. Some users on Reddit’s Antiwork discussion board referred to as the setup inhumane and drew comparisons with cramped “pod” residences in Asia.

“It is really not even a shared home, just stacked on best of each other like filing cabinets. The entire world is messed up. It shouldn’t be this highly-priced to just exist,” one particular person said, according to Newsweek.

James Stallworth, one of the firm’s two founders, explained to CBS Information his possess encounter with substandard housing in the Bay Location motivated him to build a greater quick-expression rental option.

“There were being around 20 beds in the house, six or eight in a place with every single other, just Ikea bunk beds,” Stallworth recalled. “It was not fantastic.” The operator billed each individual occupant $1,000 a month, Stallworth recalled.

With Brownstone, Stallworth explained he aims to “maintain humanity and comfort and privateness” for its occupants. 

Stallworth and cofounder Christina Lennox dwell in the Palo Alto pod dwelling along with their tenants. Just 1 pod is at present vacant, which Stallworth said he is performing to fill.

The business doesn’t run classic credit score checks on their occupants, in its place jogging a qualifications look at to make guaranteed a possible tenant can are living with some others. “[W]e consider individuals by the written content of their character, not the contents of their bank account,” the company’s web site explained. You will find no protection deposit, building it uncomplicated to shift.

The latest occupants are in their 20s and 30s and are interns, persons on temporary do the job assignments or just starting off their professions, Stallworth said.

“All people receives together now,” he mentioned, incorporating that at the start out of the undertaking “there have been certainly individuality clashes.”

A next home in Bakersfield, which sleeps six, is at this time 50 %-comprehensive, Stallworth explained. Lennox owns the Bakersfield household Brownstone rents out the Palo Alto home, and in turn subleases it to tenants.

The beds’ steel frames are customized-built based mostly on a design and style Lennox considered up. She and Stallworth slice the wood and wire the pods them selves, beneath an electrician’s supervision.

“The pod, when they are in it, feels like their possess area — it’s absolutely nothing like a bunk bed due to the fact it is really enclosed,” Stallworth reported. “You never have a principle of how several there are in the place.”

Outside of California?

Stallworth mentioned he wishes to expand the housing notion to other metropolitan areas, name-examining Brooklyn, New York, as a primary goal. He explained the organization has signed up 400 fascinated men and women in the current market already.

“There are so several people today who usually are not performing factors since housing is a barrier. Our strategies are [to go] where ever you will find the biggest require,” he claimed.

But the notion could be problematic in regions that restrict how many people can share a single property. Palo Alto has no this sort of restrictions, and Brownstone benefited from a sympathetic landlord. Quite a few other metropolitan areas have constraints on the amount of unrelated individuals allowed to occupy a dwelling, despite the fact that they are not constantly enforced.

“We would naturally make certain we could run in just the legislation,” Stallworth claimed, introducing that he belives occupancy restrictions are “inherently discriminatory.”

Due to the fact the sleeping pods are all contained in two rooms, the added bedrooms have all been repurposed as doing work or lounging locations.

The houses implement a no-overnight-website visitors plan to preserve crowding down, Stallworth reported: “Fourteen folks is fantastic, 28 is not high-quality.”

Brownstone is far from the initially organization to try to make a desirable residing area out of tight quarters. Co-living providers have proliferated in the U.S. as housing prices have soared.

In Los Angeles, residents of a co-living elaborate termed Eddy shell out $795 to $945 a month for a pod mattress in a furnished house with linen solutions, shared pcs and an on-web-site health club. A chain of residences known as PodShare in the Los Angeles region rates $50 a night or $1,000 a thirty day period for a pod. After they’ve paid out, inhabitants can go freely among 5 facilities.

“We imagine that you only actually need a tiny room to oneself to sleep, take it easy and retail outlet your possessions. The rest of our time should be put in on shared encounters,” PodShare’s web site says.

For comparison, a studio condominium rents for $2,400 in the Bay Place and $2,230 in Los Angeles, in accordance to Real estate agent.com. And, as selling prices have risen, the amount of personal house for each renter has also shrunk.

An assessment by RentCafe discovered that, in 2020, the typical renter experienced just 540 square feet of space to themselves — the sizing of a large learn bed room. That’s 25 square toes fewer than they did a decade ago.