Housing costs have become so expensive in some cities that people are renting bunk beds in a communal home for $1,200 a month. Not a bedroom. A bed. PodShare is trying to help make up for the shortage of affordable housing in cities like San Francisco and Los Angeles by renting dormitory-style lodging and providing tenants a co-living experience.
A PodShare membership allows you to snag any of the 220 beds -- or pods -- at six locations across Los Angeles and one in San Francisco. There's no deposit and no commitment. You get a bed, a locker, access to wifi and the chance to meet fellow "pod-estrians." Each pod includes a shelf and a personal television. Food staples, like cereal and ramen, and toiletries like toothpaste and toilet paper, are also included.
What you don't get? Privacy. But that's an easy trade-off, say the mostly young people who live there. Stephen T. Johnson, the 27-year-old founder of FlipMass, an advertising company for Instagram influencers, says he can afford his own place in San Francisco, but doesn't want to be locked into renting a tiny, overpriced apartment. "I had a micro studio that was $1,750 per month," says Johnson. "It was less than 200 square feet. This is actually a luxury and costs less than the place that I lived a couple blocks down the street."
He's been living at PodShare for five months, and using it as a live/work space. "I think anyone that's staying in arrangements like this is just early to a new form of housing," Johnson says. "There's so many different living arrangements and I think this will just be one of the available options to everyone in the future."
Although PodShare may seem a lot like a hostel (bunk beds in a shared room, for example), the company prefers to call it co-living. PodShare may not have as much privacy as an apartment, says Rayyan Zahid, 23, a software engineer living in San Francisco, but that's not a priority for him at the moment. "What does matter is if I'm in the right place and surrounded by the right people and if it is efficient."
PodShare allows him to live close to work, eliminating the two-hour commute time he would have if he'd moved to a suburb he could afford. As an immigrant from Pakistan, Zahid says he struggled with all of the requirements to get an apartment. "I was trying to find a place to rent," he says. "But I needed to have a credit score. I needed to have my tax records. Just stuff like that. If you study here, you might have some of those things. But if you're immigrating, you will most definitely not have those things."
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