With the boom in rent and housing prices, a shared home might just be the thing for the future. Also, with rent in several places being unaffordable, it helps the residents survive. Currently, a type of rental concept that includes sleeping pods has become available in Palo Alto in the San Fransico Bay Area.
If you have lived in the Bay Area, you already know that they pay some of the highest rents in the US. Especially for those who have just moved here and are in between jobs. According to a 2022 Zumper Rent Report, San Fransico has the second-highest average rent prices behind New York. This has led to Silicon Valley trying out a new form of housing. This would encompass sleeping in individual, small pods in a shared house. Interesting, isn’t it?
If you think this sounds unreasonable, let’s put some things in perspective. For a three-bedroom, two-bath house, rent in Palo Alto is around $6,000 to $8,000 per month. Now, with a 14-person shared home in place, every resident pays around $800. The kitchen, bathrooms, and social areas would be communal, but every resident sleeps in pods that are about the size of a twin bed.
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A Shared Home Could Be the Answer To Expensive Rents
Christina Lennox, the Co-Founder of Brownstone Share Housing, has only positives to say. “Our pods are actually eight feet tall, so it gives enough room for like bigger people and like also some wiggle room, so they’re not like the Japanese capsules. They’re a bit larger.” Now, one should not think that the pods are just beds and nothing else. In fact, they come with a temperature-controlled fan and other assortments. Some can even add a few personalized touches if they want to. Lennox herself states that she could live inside it the whole day!
This begets a question. How did the concept of a shared home come by? Lennox states that she and co-founder James Stallworth wanted to deal with the problem of affordable housing. While they had initially tried to do this in New York, they faced problems. This led to a shift to Palo Alto, which has another benefit to it. Apparently, the city of Palo Alto doesn’t set a limit on the number of renters. They also managed to get a cooperative landlord. Stallworth stated, “We told them about our concept and the benefits of it and how it would help people, and the landlord was interested.”
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