A startup in San Francisco that rents out bunkbed-style pods large enough to fit a twin mattress is overwhelmed with demand for its $700-a-month living quarters. The company, Brownstone Shared Housing, operates out of a former bank in downtown San Francisco. The pods are 3.5ft-by-4ft-by-6.5ft with a privacy curtain; rent includes internet, utilities, and access to shared bathrooms and a kitchen.
The company, which has been in operation for several years, says 300 people have used an online application to apply for its remaining 17 beds. Brownstone also operates a similar shared living space in Palo Alto near the campus of Stanford University. Many of the individuals whom live in these spaces are aspiring startup founders, but it’s not a requirement and Brownstone has marketed itself as offering affordable housing to people from different backgrounds. The company even wants to take over X’s formal headquarters and turn it into low-income housing thanks to recent changes in California zoning regulation.
The company was flagged last year by San Francisco officials for unauthorized conversion of an office building for residential. San Francisco officials have allowed existing residents to remain in the building, but they still cannot welcome new tenants. Brownstone submitted a new approval application hoping to convert the building to residential use back in July of this year.
Communal living situations are not unusual in San Francisco. For years there have existed “hacker homes” across the city where broke startup founders with a dream have shacked up in close quarters with others to save money and potentially meet like-minded individuals. Some of these spaces have shut down under a flurry of controversy, however — Launch House, which was a combination startup accelerator and shared living startup — closed in 2022 following an exposé by Vox which unearthed a series of misconduct and sexual assault allegations.
And back in May, a series of tweets went viral in which a woman described how community-style houses in the Bay Area formed around an interest in AI had a “climate that was like a fratty LSD version of 2008 Wall Street bankers, which bodes ill for AI safety,” saying that women have been taken advantage of and coerced into uncomfortable situations in which they feel a need to participate in order to be included in the AI race.
Brownstone has not been the subject of any such allegations.
Shows like HBO’s Silicon Valley have glamorized these types of living situations. And to be sure, the affordable housing crisis will require a whole host of creative solutions. But when you mix maladjusted, socially awkward young men with women in a co-ed living situation, there’s bound to be something go awry. And paying $700 a month to live in a cramped pod with a privacy curtain is not ideal for other reasons. If you’re a young and sexless male it might be fine for a little while. But people should be able to go home at night to their own private abode.
