Housing in California became so expensive that San Francisco residents have been willing to spend $900 on a 4ft pod to save money.
The California housing crisis drove a mass migration out of the state – with 500,000 more people leaving in a two-year-period than arriving.
Brownstone Shared Housing came up with a creative solution to overpriced housing with their communal living pods. Each pod is 3.5ft wide and 4ft tall – barely big enough to fit a twin mattress and not nearly tall enough to stand up in.
The pods range from $500 to $900 a month – which sounds steep for a glorified closet, but compared to other rental properties on the market it is a bargain.
San Francisco is investigating the low-cost housing option after it became apparent that the developers might not have had the correct permits to build their pod-complex.
The California housing crisis has sparked a creative solution to extortionate rent prices – a 4ft pod in a communal house which costs $900 a month
The pod is 3.5ft long and 4ft tall – just big enough to fit a twin bed – and includes a few amenities like a charging outlet, LED lights and temperature control
The pod-living houses have communal areas for their residents to enjoy
The idea of tiny pod houses came from the Japanese ‘coffin house’ which was Tokyo’s solution to housing the jobless during the country’s recession in 2009.
According to the property-finding website Zillow, the average San Francisco studio apartment is a whopping $2,200 a month.
The median studio apartment in Palo Alto, home to tech tycoons and the center of Silicon Valley, is even more expensive at $2,300 a month.
The much cheaper tiny living spaces offer a basic pod to sleep in and amenities like charging stations, LED lights and individual climate control systems.
Christian Lewis – founder of an AI start-up and tenant of the SF pods – said: ‘I actually pushed off coming to San Francisco for a really long time, but it was been absolutely net positive without a doubt. Just for the first couple of days, I met some of the smartest people I’ve met in my entire life. That’s the reason I came and that’s the reason why I’m staying. That’s the reason why I’m living in a pod.’
Lewis announced that he was going to live in the San Francisco pod community for 30 days where he would be paying $700/mo rent. He seemed to be enjoying his stay so far having met ‘a lot of cool people.’
He shared on X (formerly Twitter) that there were several AI founders and indie hackers at Mint Plaza and said ‘the downstairs lounges are actually nice’.
Founders of Brownstone Shared Housing, James Stallworth and Cristina Lennox, were inspired to come up with a solution to unaffordable housing after experiencing similar struggles themselves.
The pair developed the creative idea of shared pod houses when they worked together in the California State Auditor’s office in the state’s capital of Sacramento.
They launched their first affordable communal home in Palo Alto in 2021 and combined the concept of pod-living – which is popular in parts of Asia – with all the comforts of a fully furnished home.
The first pod-house went so well that they decided to expand to San Francisco, Bakersfield and San Jose.
Stallworth said: ‘We created these sleeping pods that landlords can put in their houses.
‘And so instead of renting to a smaller group of people, it allows more people to share a home. The price that we end up charging for a sleeping pod is a fraction of what people would pay if they were splitting a room in a house … which would be closer to $2,000.’
The founders of Brownstone Shared Housing have come under investigation by the city of San Francisco after they potentially didn’t gather the right permits for their affordable-housing mission
The shared living spacers in the pod-community have become a great place for young tech entrepreneurs and AI developers to network
Christian Lewis – founder of an AI start-up and tenant of the SF pods – said: ‘Just for the first couple of days, I met some of the smartest people I’ve met in my entire life. That’s the reason I came and that’s the reason why I’m staying. That’s the reason why I’m living in a pod’
Stallworth and Lennox were surprised when the tenants of their Palo Alto house – aged between 18 and 35 – stayed at the house for six months to a year, despite there being no minimum commitment to the rent.
The Palo Alto house is technically leased to Brownstone Shared Housing – but the communal pod living has sparked an investigation by the city of San Francisco into whether the developers, Lennox and Stallworth, had the correct permits before opening up their alternative living concept.
According to Palo Alto Online, the pair implemented an organizational system to give everyone equal drawer, closet and refrigerator space and everyone is responsible for the cleanliness of their own pod, with a cleaning person coming to handle the communal areas every two weeks.
Along with personal amenities, the communal living situation at Mint Plaza also includes shared living spaces.
The communal areas have become a good place for networking in San Francisco’s up-and-coming tech and artificial intelligence industries.