As I’ve said before, if political solutions were viable then this would have been solved 5+ years ago.
Addressing the problem will require an approach that doesn’t assume you can build more housing in the expensive metro areas with good jobs. While that doesn’t leave many options, I can think of at least 3 that are somewhat practical:
1. Find ways to increase the quality of the average grouphouse so more people want to live in them.
2. Coordinate groups of people to move from NIMBY cities with 10⁄10 jobs and 10⁄10 house prices to YIMBY cities with 8⁄10 jobs but 3⁄10 house prices.
3. Find ways to reduce the overall cost of living that don’t require someone to expend much effort per $ saved, reduce their quality of life or shift negative externalities onto someone else’s balance sheet.
The project I’ve been running (Kernel) has been doing some research on this, and we’ve found potential solutions in all 3 areas. To give one example, if you found a way to increase the efficiency of a grouphouse bedroom so everything that would usually take 150ft2 can be done in 75ft2 without throwing important considerations under the bus, someone would only need to rent half as much room to maintain the same quality of life.
Squeezing everyone into college-dorm-style housing would certainly reduce living costs, but people who want that can already do it. Most don’t.
You’re right that dorm-style housing is an existing option, and most people don’t want to in them for obvious reasons. However:
There isn’t going to be a one-size-fits all solution to high housing costs, but that’s okay. Housing isn’t an all or nothing problem, progress can be made on the margin. If you come up with something that gets on the front page of Hacker News and receives 500 comments saying it’s the worst idea ever, but just 50 people find it works for their unique circumstances and save $200/month over the next 3 years because of it, you’ll have made the problem $360,000 smaller.
While I would never want to live in a PodShare, hundreds of Californians seem to think paying $1200/month to sleep in an open-plan room with 20 strangers is better than their current alternatives. The fact that this is true should indicate some *very* low hanging fruit here.
Your solution is… a bunk bed with cabinets built in?
You could call it a loft bed for adults, but that doesn’t tell you why anyone would want one.
It’s not so much a loft bed as a system designed from first principles around the specific constraints of a freelancer aged 20-30 renting a small room (or half of a large one) inside a grouphouse. Considerations such as:
Privacy
Having somewhere for your clothes and suitcase
Having a secure place to store valuables and sensitive documents
Having somewhere to dry your towel
Having a romantic partner be able to stay the night
Being able to have sex without waking up the whole house
Low ceilings
Being able to have sex without one of you hitting their head on the ceiling
Not having to crouch when walking under the bed if you’re 6ft2
Having a work-space that helps you to be productive
Having no control over the location of sockets or lights
Not being able to change the landlord’s curtains
Not being able to put any holes in the wall
Being able to bring the system with you when you move and having it fit in your new room
Being able to build the system yourself
Without knowing the exact dimensions of the room beforehand
With cheap and commonly available materials
With only handyman-level skills and a few basic power tools
Being able to cut the wood and do most of the assembly outside/in a garage
Being able to get the components through a bedroom doorway
Being able to assemble them like an IKEA flatpack and have everything fit together correctly
Having it look neat and precise enough that people don’t assume you made it yourself
Thanks for being up for having this conversation in comments! Sorry for the slow response; I just got back to proper internet after several days on an island.
As I’ve said before, if political solutions were viable then this would have been solved 5+ years ago.
I still think dramatic improvement is possible via the political process for two main reasons:
The higher rents get, the more pressure there is to fix this. While it wasn’t great five years ago, it’s much worse now. As terrible housing policy continues expanding the number of people it affects, it’s easier to build support for measures to fix it.
Housing coalitions are shifting, YIMBY is growing, and the idea that we can make things better by building more is spreading.
I think we should continue trying to build this support.
Find ways to increase the quality of the average grouphouse so more people want to live in them. … if you found a way to increase the efficiency of a grouphouse bedroom so everything that would usually take 150ft2 can be done in 75ft2 without throwing important considerations under the bus, someone would only need to rent half as much room to maintain the same quality of life
I think this could be a decent solution for many young relatively well off single people without kids, who live primarily digital lives. While this is a demographic we know many people in, it’s only a very small slice of the people affected by the housing crisis. Separately, since different people have different preferences and constraints I suspect most people who would have the time, energy, and inclination to build something like this would actually want to customize it more for their situation. Which is fine! Your design can still be useful even if most builders use it as a jumping-off point; you don’t need interchangeable parts.
If people really did have generally similar preferences here you could build this in your apartment, and then when you moved you could sell it to the incoming tenant and leave it there. But if you actually tried this, even in a city like SF with tons of people in the target demographic, I expect pretty much everyone would ask you to bring it with you, even if you offered it for free. Similarly, if this were a large improvement over the kinds of loft systems you can already buy from IKEA I would expect you to be able to sell these to the general public, but again I don’t think it would be very popular.
Coordinate groups of people to move from NIMBY cities with 10⁄10 jobs and 10⁄10 house prices to YIMBY cities with 8⁄10 jobs but 3⁄10 house prices.
I’m also not sure where you’re getting “8/10 jobs”; I think the benefits of being in the top city for your field are usually much higher than 25%, more like 50% to 300%.
(Thoughts translated from private message)
As I’ve said before, if political solutions were viable then this would have been solved 5+ years ago.
Addressing the problem will require an approach that doesn’t assume you can build more housing in the expensive metro areas with good jobs. While that doesn’t leave many options, I can think of at least 3 that are somewhat practical:
1. Find ways to increase the quality of the average grouphouse so more people want to live in them.
2. Coordinate groups of people to move from NIMBY cities with 10⁄10 jobs and 10⁄10 house prices to YIMBY cities with 8⁄10 jobs but 3⁄10 house prices.
3. Find ways to reduce the overall cost of living that don’t require someone to expend much effort per $ saved, reduce their quality of life or shift negative externalities onto someone else’s balance sheet.
The project I’ve been running (Kernel) has been doing some research on this, and we’ve found potential solutions in all 3 areas. To give one example, if you found a way to increase the efficiency of a grouphouse bedroom so everything that would usually take 150ft2 can be done in 75ft2 without throwing important considerations under the bus, someone would only need to rent half as much room to maintain the same quality of life.
Your solution is… a bunk bed with cabinets built in?
Squeezing everyone into college-dorm-style housing would certainly reduce living costs, but people who want that can already do it. Most don’t.
You’re right that dorm-style housing is an existing option, and most people don’t want to in them for obvious reasons. However:
There isn’t going to be a one-size-fits all solution to high housing costs, but that’s okay. Housing isn’t an all or nothing problem, progress can be made on the margin. If you come up with something that gets on the front page of Hacker News and receives 500 comments saying it’s the worst idea ever, but just 50 people find it works for their unique circumstances and save $200/month over the next 3 years because of it, you’ll have made the problem $360,000 smaller.
While I would never want to live in a PodShare, hundreds of Californians seem to think paying $1200/month to sleep in an open-plan room with 20 strangers is better than their current alternatives. The fact that this is true should indicate some *very* low hanging fruit here.
You could call it a loft bed for adults, but that doesn’t tell you why anyone would want one.
It’s not so much a loft bed as a system designed from first principles around the specific constraints of a freelancer aged 20-30 renting a small room (or half of a large one) inside a grouphouse. Considerations such as:
Privacy
Having somewhere for your clothes and suitcase
Having a secure place to store valuables and sensitive documents
Having somewhere to dry your towel
Having a romantic partner be able to stay the night
Being able to have sex without waking up the whole house
Low ceilings
Being able to have sex without one of you hitting their head on the ceiling
Not having to crouch when walking under the bed if you’re 6ft2
Having a work-space that helps you to be productive
Having no control over the location of sockets or lights
Not being able to change the landlord’s curtains
Not being able to put any holes in the wall
Being able to bring the system with you when you move and having it fit in your new room
Being able to build the system yourself
Without knowing the exact dimensions of the room beforehand
With cheap and commonly available materials
With only handyman-level skills and a few basic power tools
Being able to cut the wood and do most of the assembly outside/in a garage
Being able to get the components through a bedroom doorway
Being able to assemble them like an IKEA flatpack and have everything fit together correctly
Having it look neat and precise enough that people don’t assume you made it yourself
Thanks for being up for having this conversation in comments! Sorry for the slow response; I just got back to proper internet after several days on an island.
I still think dramatic improvement is possible via the political process for two main reasons:
The higher rents get, the more pressure there is to fix this. While it wasn’t great five years ago, it’s much worse now. As terrible housing policy continues expanding the number of people it affects, it’s easier to build support for measures to fix it.
Housing coalitions are shifting, YIMBY is growing, and the idea that we can make things better by building more is spreading.
I think we should continue trying to build this support.
I think this could be a decent solution for many young relatively well off single people without kids, who live primarily digital lives. While this is a demographic we know many people in, it’s only a very small slice of the people affected by the housing crisis. Separately, since different people have different preferences and constraints I suspect most people who would have the time, energy, and inclination to build something like this would actually want to customize it more for their situation. Which is fine! Your design can still be useful even if most builders use it as a jumping-off point; you don’t need interchangeable parts.
If people really did have generally similar preferences here you could build this in your apartment, and then when you moved you could sell it to the incoming tenant and leave it there. But if you actually tried this, even in a city like SF with tons of people in the target demographic, I expect pretty much everyone would ask you to bring it with you, even if you offered it for free. Similarly, if this were a large improvement over the kinds of loft systems you can already buy from IKEA I would expect you to be able to sell these to the general public, but again I don’t think it would be very popular.
I think this is likely to lose too much of what people value about being in those cities.
I’m also not sure where you’re getting “8/10 jobs”; I think the benefits of being in the top city for your field are usually much higher than 25%, more like 50% to 300%.