Can micro-apartments avoid NIMBYism in suburban San Francisco?
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- Опубліковано 8 вер 2024
- San Francisco’s housing crisis is now legendary: the average rent for a 2 bedroom studio is $5000. To add housing stock fast, one developer has created the city’s first micro-apartment high rise (with units as small as 254 square feet, slightly larger than the city's new 220-square-foot minimum).
Patrick Kennedy has been crusading for increased urban density for years, when I first met him in 2011, he was surprised there weren’t more people focused on the same goal. “San Francisco’s an interesting city: 42% of the population lives alone, much higher than any other American city, and yet there’s very little stuff that addresses the needs of a single person, especially something that can be affordable to a single person.”
Back in 2011, he had built a 160 square foot unit inside a Berkeley warehouse to experiment with just how large a unit needed to be livable. “We built this prototype, it probably cost us a couple hundred grand, but we really needed to know if we needed to know whether we could make a room 9 foot 6” or whether it could be 9 foot 9”.”
See original 2011 video: faircompanies.c...
In 2012 San Francisco supervisors dropped the minimum allowed apartment size to 220 square feet and Kennedy began plans for the city’s first micro-unit high rise. In 2015 the building opened with units as small as 254 square feet. To fit 160 units on a 9000 square foot lot, Kennedy replaced car parking for a Zip car and the city’s “largest, climate-controlled bicycle parking garage” (with space for 200 bicycles). He also installed a heated Uber bench and a transit screen with real-time listings for available bike/electric scooter shares, Zip/Uber cars, and bus and light rail schedules.
He had designed the tiny units for “garden-variety hipsters” like the employees from the Twitter headquarters across the street, but in the end, California College of the Arts and the San Francisco Conservatory of Music leased the space for student dorms: rents are just under $12000/year for a shared double.
Original video: faircompanies.c...
Everyone is complaining how small these apartments are. What do you expect? San Francisco is incredibly expensive. What a bigger place in SF? Get ready to pay a whole lot more.
It sounds strange, but i think someone should consider doing a version of this for retired people. People who no longer need a full house and want to simplify their existence but don't want to be in the usual old folk's home.
+MakeMeThinkAgain That is the idea. That homes/apartments should be built for all stages in life. We don't need all of our homes to be built big enough to fit an entire family. Instead of the "just in case" mentality, we can build more customized to different stages of life (single, family, empty nesters).
Your comment makes me wish Kirsten would go to some of those Scandinavian countries to check out how some of those cities have brought college students together with the geriatric population to see first hand how that might benefit both seniors and students. Currently living in a town that is largely geriatric I definitely tend to notice, at least in America, that we warehouse these people that have a lifetime (literally) of experience and insight that seems to go largely to waste in their later years. Certainly not an enviable state of affairs and maybe even one that deserves to be changed.
Robert Sinton I think it makes even more sense to mix the elderly with young families.
Yeah, because I want to hear a bunch of kids screaming their fucking heads off at all hours! Stupid twat.
MakeMeThinkAgain k
“There’s nothing more depressing than seeing your mop and broom out”. No sir, there’s nothing more depressing than paying so much for so little.
Wonder where the storage space is for your dirty laundry
i know I am kinda randomly asking but does anyone know a good website to watch new tv shows online ?
@Nehemiah Kylan flixportal :P
@Creed Dax thank you, I went there and it seems like a nice service :) I appreciate it !
@Nehemiah Kylan No problem :D
"We wanted to make very sticky social spaces"
less than a minute later
"We also deliberately made all the furniture uncomfortable."
Oh...so you don't know what "sticky social space" really means do you...(hint, probably where people are _comfortable_ and want to be in...)
I’m laughing at this.... dumb dumb
We need to fight for codes to keep apartments livable !!!! Look up this article with pics of the ***toilet inside the bedroom!*** No walls to the bathroom!!!
Article title: U District micro-apartment: affordable steal or ‘prison cell’?
You don't even get a kitchenette in your unit. Some looks like black bars across the bottom section of each window.....
......in keeping with that prison motif.
"I always found if you're in your living room that it's intrinsically depressing to look at a toaster oven" Hell no, what's depressing is to be confined in 160sq feet.
Not to mention the limited space of the _built environment_ reduces your mobility, potentially leading to a sedentary lifestyle chock full of potential future health problems.
Motox 2 & Y'all...want to see pics of unit with the TOILET inside the bedroom? No joke. No living room or kitchen in the unit.
See photos at seattle . curbed . com Title:
"U District micro-apartment: affordable steal or ‘prison cell’?"
@@Well_possibly, better or worse than the prison cell in which Jeffery Epstein _killed_ himself? There was a video feed of El Chapo's digs in the same facility. It featured one-piece stainless steel sink and toilet combo. It looked easy to clean, but is too institutional for my tastes.
Motox 2 😂
...and not have been sentenced to it.
That “reading room” is so cold, uncomfortable and sterile looking. Doubt it will get much use.
This is not the future I used to dream of when I was young.
Exactly! Where is your dog? No dog? No thank you! Where is your grass? Your mailbox, your flower beds? Where is your Christmas tree? Your dining room table? Your piano, your patio, your bath tub? This little box is not what most aspire to. It's fine... for students... but it's not conducive to family life.
This seems to be a man that created a space he wouldn't be caught dead living in, kind of an "these idiots will pay for this and they'll like it" sort of vibe (which is not to say that people who want this style of living are idiots, just that the developer seems to have that attitude).
"We also deliberately made all the furniture slightly uncomfortable." 😵
I feel like he is doing this because it's a good marketing opportunity. He does not seem that passionate about micro housing. Maybe that's not true but it kind of how he came across.
"We deliberately made all the furniture slightly uncomfortable" - kill me. It's so sterile looking, and uncomfortable to boot?
I thought the same thing. Who wants to hang out in a stone hard warehouse?
exactly. you want warmth in your home
"We don't have any outlets cause we want people to rely on oldschool technology." Where is anyone going to plug their laptop in for work? smh my head
@@kawaiidere1023
Some items are high end to justify the ridiculously small footprint, but those items are bought once.
This man is a horror!! They don't have plugs for laptops because they literally don't want to pay for electricity in their main lounge area. In the same breath he talks about them needing an escape from their small apartments, but creating uncomfortable furniture in that escape so they won't stay and lounge around.
In the beginning you can appreciate it, because you think he is trying to make a difference in an over-priced market....
Then you realize that HE is the problem!!
It's about making things as small as possible to collect the highest rent. Now they figured out instead of 1 bedrooms, you can eliminate a kitchen and bath,( initial investment lower ), by providing 2 individual bedrooms.
If the lounge had really been made for an escape you might enjoy living here, but as it is the one comfort that was intentionally held back would just make you resent the place.
“Can be heated with a hair dryer”
A hair dryer uses 1,500w. The exact same as a space heater. He’s saying the space is so small all you need is a one room heater but making it sound like some crazy efficiency by mentioning a hair dryer
No. He means people dry their hair anyway. Its called passive heating.
He is pitching. No big deal. There are worse ones to be seen.
Despite all my rage, I am still just a rat in a cage.
Woooo! I miss the 90's.
@Susan Hughey difference is that was a charity, these are very expensive
Only if you choose to be. There must be some way to fight back. Think, thinking isn't illegal yet.
@Susan Hughey not before my time. Mos def in my wheelhouse.☺️
@Daniel Wong ding, ding, ding. FTW.
This looks like a psychology experiment to study the long term affects of living in a cubicle. I wonder if they have suicide nets outside the building...
Pac Oo
Don't need experiments. There are entire cities in Asia like this.
🤣🤣🤣🤣Suicide nets--that's awesome. I also like the comment about these units looking like prison cells in Norway.
Kind of similar to those rat tests they did in the 70's.
Yep lab rats except YOU pay them to participate.
I want to know if this man, politicians et al, the people with these ideas to pack people into cells for their living spaces, are people like this man and politicians pushing this kind of living, are THEY willing to live in these things? I can bet this man in the video has a very nice, very roomy living place in a really good part of SF.
Extended dorm life, bleak human warehousing.
Lonesome Rhodes, your comment is one of the best. You've summed it up well.
Where I used to live, they required developers to build a minimum number of affordable housing units for x number of market rate. (State or county requirement...I'm not sure which.)
We need to push for that, plus rent control, imho.
Craziest thing he said - they have common rooms so that people can mingle (and get out of their tiny cans) but he deliberately made the furniture uncomfortable!?!?
He meant to dissuade comfort cats to not be there at all times n stride
Makes sense.
If you sit by a QSR restaurant, the same concept design applies
So true
apart from the design aesthetic to the apartment space itself, this is actually pretty dope
I really like the concept. But living in a really tiny apartment (though bigger than these) for a few month I realized how much negative impact it had on my mental health. Living in such a matchbox you have to be really careful not to get depressed.
+Frederic Maurer. Thx for yr post. Thought it was just me. I have 284 sq ft, but only bed is comfortable (like these apts). I feel like a hospital patient most of the time.
With the schools leasing the building it means that graduates will struggle to continue to live in the City. The whole point of the micro approach is to allow young professionals to stay urban.
In Ireland these are called bedsits. I've lived in them they are depressing af. Though ours were just divided Victorian era houses.
I will call it bedshit, cos u can only sleep & shit in them..
I got depressed just by looking at this video..
Just look at Hong kong apartments, Patrick Kennedy will look like an amateur. Why is he making the layout so uncomfortable?
Signature Thapa Yeah, they didn't think out the layouts very well
@@kotare86 I agree , it looks depressing
Yes! Pack em in like sardines so the developers can make more money! We need to efficiently store our minimum wage drone workers. To hell with privacy or quality of life...that's an upgrade. All lazy workers should be forced to work at stand up desks, and comfortable seats are only for the corporate masters.
YOU ARE BRILLIANT!!
this is a great "transitional" dorm - like apartment building for young adults/new college graduates. may have some life-long residents as well, but for the most part - it will likely be a good landing/launching pad for that transitional decade between college and "adulthood." here in chicago, we all lived in wrigleyville and put 3-4 people in each apartment after college for that transitional 4-5 years. its a great way to keep costs down those early years.
Good point. You nailed
So Basically he took a fairly standard college dorm style layout, then added bells and whistles with the personality of driftwood...
Even though this is a really well made space, its depressing for some reason, I just cant put my finger on why
+03studios Very high utility and lack of soul. It's like living at the office
+03studios I felt the same way. The whole concept is very dystopian, with humans being packed into an absolute minimum amount of space. This guy also talks a lot about controlling and manipulating human behavior, as if his tenants were rats in a science experiment. The really depressing thing is that these micro-apartments cost more than renting a full-sized house in many other parts of the country. He also mentioned that 42% of San Franciscans live alone, which is pretty depressing in and of itself.
It's a choice. There is not enough space in San Francisco for all the people who want to live there so it makes sense to build smaller and offer more units for the people who don't need as much space. As for his "Skinnerian complex", that is what every building designer does- thinks about how the space will be used and makes decisions- he's just more verbal about it.
Kirsten Dirksen Yes, it's definitely a choice. No one is holding a gun to anyone's head forcing them to live in San Francisco, or to pay insane rent prices for tiny apartments. I guess my sentiment speaks more to the larger trend of over-compartmentalizing people. However, as the dollar grows ever weaker, and more people find themselves unemployed or underemployed, and inflation creeps ever higher... these are the inevitable choices that people will make in order to cope.
+shut up & hike I personally think what it lacks is people and their lifes, tastes, personal belongings inside. It was not inhabited for the most part, so it lacks the best part of it... People themselves! But that's not a fault, it's utility. I wouldn't like an apartment building to chase me with stuff and colours even before I move there.
Good video, it's sad to see my old house from outside the window and see what that neighborhood is turning into though, a bunch of sterile, overpriced apartments for techies. Didn't catch him mentioning a price but I'm sure it's over 1400 for one of those rooms. LOL at "affordable" housing in SF.
try $3-4,000.00
+Andrew B Actual Price is $12,000/year for the two bedroom apartments. $1000/month or $500/month per person. Actually not bad at all.
+Cory Lannon wow. not bad at all. A friend of mine lives in a one bedroom apt. in downtown SF. $3,000.00 a month.
+Bob Vance just checked with my friend he says $4,000 a mo. one bedroom apartment.
+Knight Rider Iol
Now let's see the architects house. No way that guy is living in one of these shoe boxes. It looks like a new age slave quarters.
cattalkbmx Exactly. Nothing he says sounds sincere or connected to humanity.
yall want free colleg say hello to agenda 21s free housing
You obviously havent seen Japan's housing or Chinas
Sidney Boo I have no idea what referring to Japan and China has to do with anything with regards to me noting his persona and delivery. Have a good day.
Raymond Flores, how about a bedroom with the toilet and shower inside it....no walls to hide them? They built them in Seattle.
Photos at article at seattle . curbed . com titled:
U District micro-apartment: affordable steal or ‘prison cell’?
No kitchenette in the unit either. So sad!
As a society, we've got to fight this and get affordable housing!
People didn't graduate from college to move into a dorm room.
There is some interesting design features here but some really bizarre ideas about "herding people" into certain activities. I mean designing a common room for people to gather in with furniture that isn't comfortable seems like a contradiction. You want people to gather together bit sit on furniture that is not comfortable? Maybe this guy could open a restaurant that serves food that does not taste so good so people won't eat too much... hahahah
Haha, yeah! 😅
"We deliberately make all our food slightly too cold so that people eat quickly and leave the restaurant."
That would probably work in San Francisco
+Test Channel 1 There was coffee shop in my college yrs called "Sambo's" where they painted everything purple and orange, researched as being most unappetizing colors. Reason was so tables would turn over faster.
That’s an actual thing grocery stores do also so people GTFO as soon as possible, bright fluorescent lights and horrible music. It definitely makes me leave ASAP
Yeah, weird choice among a video of great ideas... The way I see a social scene developing is if you build a place with plenty of resources to help someone come down and work... Chargers, comfy seats & workstations, free coffee... and a culture developing through that. Anyway...
Fun fact ..
He says "this is San Francisco " 600 times in this video.
To all the people commenting about the high cost of rent in San Francisco, I've made a few comments about why supply is so restricted (mainly the anti-growth focus of the city), but I also want to bring up my friend Johnny’s ongoing research into alternatives to the most popular cities. He’s written a lot about the 2nd tier cities (as far as rents go) like Buffalo, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Louisville and what he calls “an archipelago of West Berlins” across the country.
granolashotgun.com/2015/10/04/an-archipelago-of-west-berlins/
“As market demand for vibrant, convivial, walkable places overwhelms the limited supply people are having to make tough choices. A generation ago people who preferred a neighborhood with a functional public realm moved to Boston, Portland, Toronto, D.C., Vancouver, or Brooklyn. There were always trade offs to these locations, but on the whole folks were able to find some version of what they wanted at a manageable price. Today? Not so much. Real estate costs in top tier cities have become prohibitive.”
…
“All across the interior of the continent there are depopulated half forgotten remnants of once great cities and towns that have all the same qualities as premium cities, but at rock bottom prices… There are modest shotgun homes for sale in transitional neighborhoods in Louisville for under $60,000… Louisville’s historic neighborhoods are part of what I’ve come to think of as an archipelago of West Berlins that stretches from the Great Lakes, down into the southern Midwest, and flirts with Appalachia. Buffalo, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Louisville… These are some of the islands in the chain. They float in a sea of banal suburbs and rural hinterlands.”
+Kirsten Dirksen Yup. I've lived my whole life in NYC and Los Angeles, after growing up in NW Washington, D.C. All were very expensive. Now, my wife and I are moving to Memphis, TN. To purchase a home in our neighborhood in L.A. it is easy to pay over $1,000 per sq. ft, and in Memphis we can buy a beautiful home for *under* $100 per sq. ft. It's insane.
+godfatherNYC Smart. Why do we all want to be where everyone else is. And what's more, why do we feel we have a "right" to be there. There are so many other places to live, ways to live. I hope you enjoy the move.
+Kirsten Dirksen Thanks :) I've got my wife and our 4 year-old son, and that's what makes me truly happy in life. I'm looking forward to much more space, and peace and quiet. Also we have family there too now, my Mom moved there 10 years ago and my Aunt and Cousins are from there and still live there. It's gonna be fun! And we hope to (gently) encourage (or hopefully just inspire) people we meet there to conserve, recycle, reuse, etc. We did learn some cool things living in the big cities that we can pass along. Thanks for responding, I LOVE your channel!!!
+Kirsten Dirksen Seems that the solution is to build more places like the ones we love, rather than add more people into them. Not everywhere can or should be a NYC or SF, but they can be a lot better than the suburban mess that litters places like the Silicon Valley.
Also, his wet bathroom prototype missed some of the finer points on how to construct and use a wet bathroom. Tips: don't put the toilet and bathroom sink in the same room with the shower (avoids needing the curtain) and don't wear shoes inside the apartment (avoids getting them dirty - but one usually doesn't wear shoes in the bathtub anyway).
+Kirsten Dirksen It's going to all be down to price.
Wow!!! A heated Uber bench. You know what would be a thousand times more useful? A pull over area for Uber drivers so they don’t have to impede traffic while waiting for a rider.
ding,ding,ding ... we have a winner. A free thinking, living, breathing human being. Now I will tell you why the don't make cutouts so Uber's don't impede traffic. The control freak, commie, globalist minions actually desire traffic problems. Why is that ? In short, they are all about controlling your every movement and one aspect of that is to curtail your ability to travel. They hate personally owned automobiles, so they make driving as difficult as possible. You will never see a transportation plan that is designed for maximum throughput with the goal of making it as easy as possible for the most people to get from wherever they are to wherever they want to go. The design is to make driving a car as difficult as possible to discourage car ownership. Put the sheeple on a bicycle and now you have really cut down their range. You have successfully reigned in your population of slaves. See how it works ? I drive in San Francisco daily. I can see the globalist "utopia" they are constructing. It is a very low quality of life prison, which the overpaid techies have swarmed to. These entitled tech workers are the product of the globalist social engineering efforts and at least on some levels seem to enjoy their life in the packem and stackem urban dystopia that san francisco is becoming. However, the techies are also young and have a lot of money; at least they are paid a lot, but all that $$ goes to paying the astronomical rents in sf and servicing their student loans, which are sometimes equivalent to a mortgage in other parts of the country, ... so maybe it's better said they are young and have enough money left over to uber all over the city and party a lot, but not enough to ever hope to buy a home, own a car or escape their ultra high density urban dystopia. Just think about what life in the globalist planned future will be like for the other 95% who have much less money. Watch the classic sci-fi movie "Soylent Green" if you want a preview.
@@sfranger50 You're really silly. Socialist countries usually have lanes for buses and taxis to stop at, so that they can let out/take in passengers. Only in a hyper-capitalist place like America do we expect every individual to have a car and make no effort to think of other people's needs when it comes to transport.
Bicycles? the fastest way to get through a city, bypassing automobile traffic.
The prices in San Francisco? Decided by the capitalist market.
Student loans? Something unique to America, as socialist countries pay for their students' higher education.
Soylent Green is about capitalist wealth inequality (the 1%) creating a world where the rich profit off the poor by making them literally cannibalize each. Sort of a spin on Dracula, which is about the rich - represented by Dracula - being vampires who literally suck the blood from the poor to sustain themselves. These are metaphors for the ways rich people exploit poor people. Socialism is about addressing everyone's needs. Look at countries that have socialized medicine: no one goes bankrupt due to medical bills in Sweden.
it's depressing because they remind me of institutionalized dorms the only people that could afford these are hipster students.. the average person won't live in these stupid places
It's only 500$ per person.
@@Gamerad360 Really? Show us the rental page for these apartments available at this price.
Thats exaclty who will live in these in Frisco because normal can't affords anything else there. Rich Fucks destroyed that option.
@@Sybaris_Rex That's what the man in the video said....
@@Gamerad360 Yet, the provided link to his "smart spaces" is a 404. I'm not going to waste my time looking too far into it but I did a few searches and didn't find some magical $500/person small apartments under this guy's name. Either the waiting list is both private and likely as long as our lifetime or the prices skyrocketed such that the whole purpose was blown out. ...or, perhaps, the project just fell apart.
I used to live there and eventually had to leave b/c of the difficulty in finding affordable/available housing, I lived in some expensive tiny rooms with crazy ppl and not very good living conditions sometimes... so I totally appreciate what this guy is doing.
Privacy in tiny quarters.
There is always a Detroit out there waiting to be conquered
Prison cells starting as low as $1,500. a month. Includes: Day-Room & Rec. Yard.
There’s a fine line between a correctional facility and this building
Very fine line, can barely see it
Clearly you have never been in a correctional facility...
@@mad555max no but, I meant a facility in Canada.
I could tell him an RV wet bath does not work well in apartments. Many of the rooms look like a dorm room and a hospital room but at least he is trying with sample spaces. Folks also like to open their windows to get fresh air. He should take some tiny home designs and incorporate that into an apartment. I would recommend comfortable furniture in the open spaces and wifi is important all over because people like to get away and work in an open space not just a library space. How about spaces for scooters like Vespa's.
He did, almost every wall is storage.
Sorry to pop your balloon, the Chinese already do this in large scale
he made the public space "uncomfortable" what a great space to "escape to"
One is not supposed to park by the lounge at all times.
I should buy one of these and use it as my closet.
So if you live in it, you're just like Harry Potter?
the closet in my first apartment was bigger than one of these
Two washers and dryers for 160 apartments? Dude, that's not enough.
That's for every floor of the building. 16:20
And one barbecue.
18:44
Big building, 212 units
Half sized building. 160 units.
That’s 160*2/220 = 45% more units.
"Garden variety hipsters" lol
+Skyler Johnston Insulting at best.
+Ronny Julian Absolutely! Everyone knows SF is almost entirely free-range hipsters these days. Get with the times, daddy-o!
I can dig it because I'm HEP!
+Skyler Johnston ...with their fancy "ubs" ports.
and their 200 megabyte internet...
sadly he has created an extremely sterile environment. not one sofa or comfortable chair. Dormitories are more warm and inviting than this place. Where do you go to put you feet up after a hard day of work or school. You are forced to go to your bed. So say what you will. He has built a very sterile dorm. sad really
I agree with you 1000% if possible. I kept thinking, he couldn't even put some sofas in the common area. You know he probably has more then one sofa at his home. This project to me looks like a total fail.
They probably want high turnover so they can keep charging people market rate rents. None of those annoying long term renters ever getting comfortable
You can put your feet in the kitchen sink and get a foot bath at the same time
Great to see that someone is doing research on micro units. Lots to learn about basic needs. I must say that the tiny lavatory in the bathroom is NEVER adequate. Too much like being in a restroom on a train or plane. Q: What does the suite rent for in 2019? (beginning at 5:45)
They do this in China's large cities.
Hard to get used, thought
This is the saddest thing I've seen in awhile. It's like Stepford 2016. It's as if they sucked all the life and vitality out of San Francisco, gave it a steel veneer and some technology on the side and shoved it into a vat. Sterile comes to mind, home does not. There is nothing engaging about the space even in the areas that are designated for it. It seems as if the entire building was designed for discomfort - Harsh angles, a sullen gray that permeates everything, no garage, forced everything. All the beauty and charm of San Francisco is totally absent from this property.
Great idea!! Its STILL in SF, so I'm pretty sure the cost is still SUPER JAW DROPPING !!!
This is what happens when you have a city gov that has been bought and paid for.
It's college dorm living in your 30's no thank you.
jbgrooves This is justification for Gentrification!
jbgrooves, it's what happens when two million people want to live in a city that can comfortably hold 500,000.
@@incognitotorpedo42 In Tokyo in the same size 4 million people fit comfortable. this is what happens when for 20 years Nimbys block all of the development
And also in Tokyo, you can rent a 800 sq ft two bedroom apartment for 1800 a month in the center or buy a 300k single family home around 1800sq ft in the suburbs. It is a simple supply and demand, If you build enough housing, prices won't be crazy.
I live in Tokyo now and have lived in LA in the past. I believe smaller apartments are the future for many in large cities like SF and LA. People freak out at the size but once you've lived this way its not really a big deal.
After living in HK, these seem quite luxurious.
Yeah, somehow though they need to check how many people are actually living in a small space like that. It's not an intrusion but more of, to be used the way it's designed.
Ive lived in tiny places I like it*
Urban sustainable prisons; Rat Park for humans.
averat84 prisoners have more space
How do you clean those bread boards? Two whole drawers for bread boards? You can use the table...
Right? One bread board will suffice in a place that tiny for people who will more than likely be eating most of their meals from takeout containers
I thought they were just for extra counter space
No that's the guest bed.
@@hijinxxxx 😂😂 So funny!
You say that, but you don't appreciate how useful 2 supported bread boards are for home cooks.
If I didn't have my car (and if I didn't already live 5mins from the city), I would absolutely move here. This is dope.
17:10 ish) For me personally, the answer is yes. The windows would absolutely make me more inclined to take the stairs
Today’s students and 20-30 yr olds are living in vans. 250 sqft units are far more humane and luxurious.
"I always thought that, if you were in your living room... It was depressing to look at a toaster oven."
Me, laying in bed, looks up. There is my toaster over, about 7ish feet away. maybe 8.
Idk. It's kind of nice to be able to keep an eye on the toaster while im in bed.
These apartments remind me of Japan. As a developer his design is clearly encouraging/forcing individuals into a way of living, thinking, and interacting. At a certain point and time in my life, I would've wanted to live in an apartment like that. But there seems to be no solitude, no place to be completely and utterly alone with your thoughts, in contrast with feeling abandoned and alone in a crowded space. Personally, I can't live in large cities anymore. For visits, maybe a week's stay, it would be exciting, but the constant droning of millions outside the glass, wears on me quickly.
Should check out the video on the mouse utopia experiments. Cities ain't healthy...
whats the other solution then? Everyone living in subrubs isnt feasible
That is calling outgrowing your oen shell
The acid test is: would HE live in one? I'm betting "No".
Yes, I would like to know what his own house looks like.
@@maria_casuscelli Per the video link in the above description section, he got his idea for building these units after living in an Airstream with his wife and daughter. That 2011 video has a segment of him giving a tour of his 78 square foot Airstream.
+PageMonster . He wife even thought he was too Skinner-behaviorist, a nice way of saying covertly manipulative.
Well he probably wouldn't and there is nothing wrong with that. He is giving people what they WANT. He is just adapting to the market. I'm sure if he was in a position financially to need one he would.....
I was just to say that there is a particular smugness about him pointing to some features himself fully knowing that it is not "his world".
$1500 for a shared 240 sf room... I mean I guess that's not horrific by SF standards, but that hardly seems to solve the housing crisis like he suggests.
I'm really surprised that there's no gym/workout space.
+Ladee Ember yeah, and they are renting the apartments to musicians, I don't see rehearsal rooms, but there's a "quiet" room. Makes no sense.
Oh, and I found one site advertising the spaces .. where "affordable" ~starts~ at $1495 a month. Crazy.
+sportlol he said music conservatory was 5 min walk away - rehearsal space there - the bldg wasn't built for them - they just renting space after it built -
+Ladee Ember Twitter feminists don't need no workout.
Neither do trolls
I LOVE the bike room!!! That is the one thing my place doesn't have. we do have an underground garage for cars, motorcycles, and bikes. The single units are good for older geezers, like me. We are a little bit more into privacy. We just need a few feet, but it should be a private few feet. In college we had 4 people in a 2 bedroom apartment. That was fine . . . then.
I have long advocated for micro apartments at home in the USA. I am currently a digital nomad in SE Asia and have loved my apartments. I am in my third one as I travel from area to area (Bangkok-Kathmandu-Chiang Mai, so far). My apartments are in the 30-40 square meter size. They have 1 room + a bathroom. Easy to clean and cheap to heat/air condition. All I really need is a bed, kitchenette, office area, and a bathroom.
For single people, this is fantastic. I have privacy for sleeping, quiet time, and working. When I am not doing those, I don't want to sit alone. So, I am semi-forced to go out to either the common areas of my complex (laundry room, fitness center, pool, lounge areas, outside benches), walk around my area (coffee houses, restaurants, convenience stores, specialty stores) or bike/taxi further for major events (church, board game nights, bicycling club, sight seeing, visiting friends, co-working places, major stores).
I think I have more friends living this way than when I had one bedroom apartments in the USA. I plan to return to the USA in about 3 years and I hope micro apartments explode by then, especially in middle class areas for about $300/month. Come on America, we can do it! And, if that isn't done, I may just buy an RV to simulate a mobile micro apartment.
My God, what have we become? That is so depressing. I'm not sure the six figure income is worth it. You can get a better quality of life in a much more rural area. There is something so dystopian about this.
I’m late to this. It’s clear he didn’t work with an interior designer. There are no soft or textured surfaces. The “great rooms” are definitely pass-through areas. It makes it seem like it forces residents to hang out in their rooms rather than gather in the living/dining/kitchen. The colors he chose are also hospital/office like. And those bread boards are a total waste of space. There are much better options to create a sturdy cutting surface/workspace in the kitchen, and the stupid bread boards can be stacked in a cabinet or hung on the wall. Some really weird choices.
That’s ok I’ll stay in my van, I could only imagine the rent. It’s turning into a human packing facility no thank you.
I lived in a 500 square foot three bedroom apartment for three years. One of the happiest time in my life. Don’t get attached to material things.
$10,000 for one window in a stairwell but no insuite laundry. Only 2 washing machines and 2 dryers stuffed in some dark corner there's going to be 400 People living there. Obviously clueless about laundry. Come on,
With no parking, that guy who is coming to fix a dishwasher will really love parking two blocks away.
That's on a good day lol, sf is a complete nightmare for parking.
I immediately ordered some of those awesome door hooks and soft close cabinet dampers after watching this. :)
This is truly depressing
The funniest and most ironic part is the hipsters moving into these sardine cans will most likely badmouth what they call "flyover states" where master bathrooms are bigger than their depressing apartment cells.
Flyover states have no jobs are much to do tbh Texas, Cali Florida,NY etc is where it’s at
Feels like people storage rather than a place to live. Really helps to convey the feeling that you're a human "resource" as oppose to a human *BEING*. Continue your meaningless toil worker drones. Plug into a wall in your alcove, I mean apartment, to regenerate, I mean sleep, to get that full Borg drone experience. And by the way, your new designation, I mean name, is 12 of 15. Welcome to the collective, I mean community.
Jesus Christ, anyone who aspires to live like this has issues.
liberals
One step away from the pods where Neo woke up in The Matrix.
I still live at my parents house, I wouldn't mind this if it was little Timmy's first apartment for $500-$600 a month, especially if it's a clean and modern environment like this one, but the reality is it's probably closer to $1500-$1600 which is definitely depressing.
Mommy issues
If it's this for cheap or something bigger but like a thousand more, I'll take this no doubt.
Uhh, I lived in a studio apartment in Japan for 2 years. The size was only about 200 square feet, and it was perfectly livable, even though I was messy and had a lot of things. I think people in US are just way behind on the idea of a micro-apartment because America is so big and they're so used to having giant houses and giant appliances. The smallest apartment he showed doesn't utilize the space very well and has a lot of big unnecessary installations that just cramped up the unit. He needs to go to East Asia and do some research on tiny studios, or just watch all the youtube videos about them.
Well, if the dude is about affordable housing, I applaud his efforts. But I think he may be Skeletor incognito. He likes making sure people do what he thinks is best: standing desks, uncomfortable seats, people are to move in then quickly out of relaxation modules, no jacks in the common room [I demand you talk to each other, as if that will happen], beds designed and sized by The Little People of America (no smack against them, they're great people), etc., etc. In summation: If you are an Android with detachable legs, this place is for you! I must return to my charging station! Do not interfere with me! We are the Borg, resistance is futile!😄😎
They look like Hospital rooms, I could never live there, good vid Kirsten.
@Susan Hughey motel esque
Thought this reminded me of something........love Donna L. R.N.!!!!!
I loved the bicycle storage area, the clean air, & the package receiving station.
(As a security guard my boss got fired when a package disappeared)
I love the idea of persuading people: to use the stairs, sit & talk outside the elevator without gadgets, & the hard -uncomfortable chairs to keep people moving, plus the library type of room.
hmm.. Why didn't they build the elevator outside the building like construction elevators?
I guess the building had already been built & the host on the video just remodeled the inside.
This is a big help for people that want to live this way.
I don't like elevators because it used to take me 1/2 an hour just to drive out of the complex.
Now I live in a small city with single family houses. I can get outside in less than 60 seconds.
Back in the 90's you could get a large studio for $525 a month. I can not imagine paying $1000 a month to share one of those closets. ( the storage closet my d studio had was half the size of one of these "apartments") At some point you have to wonder if living in the city is worth paying that kinda money just to live like your in a well maintained homeless shelter.
These awful the rooms have zero personality to them and homelessness its like coming home to student hall/hotel 🤢
Also a lot of these designers or people and companies that are making money out of this i bet don’t live in a micro apartment.
hotel was the feeling I had. I think it's helpful to have some stuff in there for starters or offer a selection for new residents to choose from, but having everything being furnished creates a lack of personality (like you said). I'm reminded of videos of people living in their vans with multifunction couches etc. That's nice and all but what if I wanted a different bench by the window? It sounds like a good bit is not customizable.
Wow, I'm so glad you talked to this maverick and kept tabs on him. I love so many of his ideas to create an effective user experience for living in SF, which is really tough. I can see students or young professionals living in a place like this because it offer personal space as well as a community space, which works really well together. I wish I saw more examples of using more plants to warm the space. I think veggie gardens would be great on the roof. I think I would be interested to know how recycling and composting could be considered in this urban building. I loved the transportation board and bike hub. I would be keen to see how this grows over time as it get more usage and see what special services can be added to make living there more attractive. Well done. I hope you do another film featuring Patrick Kennedy in another few years.
This is too organized: The space cannot be changed. You can't put yourself into it. This apartment needs to be emptier to begin with so that you can put things where you want to put them: Table on this or this side, both work. Office either in this corner or that corner, both work, etc etc. Too restrictive.
Let me get this straight..this guy is basically selling/renting what in reality is a upscale prison cell...
Lolololol!
Pretty much
this reminds me of the luxury prison they build in Norway. without the prison door.
🤣🤣🤣too funny dude!
This guy seems to really like the standing desks =)
I don't care what anyone says this is awesome!!
Require owner or owner family occupancy 51% of days for the first three years of ownership.
Stop foreign nationals from buying up new units, and allowing them to sit empty, except for a week or two per year.
They provide the hooks. What an irony.
Ugh*** no plug ins and intentionally uncomfortable and he brags about it *No*
*Your theory is Wrong*
***yes you can control peoples behavior for a short term with like Yellow makes them Eat fast like subway etc.
Mostly that stuff wont work long term.
"Its intrinsically depressing to look at a toaster oven"
I dont know why that made me lol but it did. These apartments are pretty awesome looking! Very modern! I hope austin, tx does something similar one day.
This is one of the most interesting videos in the channel, not just because it's about SF, but because it gives and an investors's in-depth perspective. All the spaces look very well done. Love the rooftop BBQ zone and the bike parking. I would enjoy living in this building for a couple of years with some cool people, studying or working on a startup.
One of the best videos I've seen on this channel so far. A professional tour and great solutions.Still I would change some things for optimal pricing and of course personal likings or needs, but hell - this is a real inspiration for anyone who will buy a small apartment.
Hoy! My 15 year old daughter wants to go to school and live in SF. Many people we talk to there say that she HAS to live outside the city and commute in. This looks like a fantastic affordable option. Thanks for showing this!
The studio shown in the beginning of the video (where the MIT student lived) reminds me of Korean "goshiwon" apartments, which are even smaller and less well-appointed and rent for $175-$500/mo in Seoul. The trick with that style of "open" shower (to avoid tracking mud through the apartment) is to do as the Koreans do, and remove your shoes at the door.
I would live in one of these apartments in a big city where there's lots to do aside from working, so you're not going to be spending much time there anyway.
WE NEED MICRO APARMENTS IN SAN DIEGO! I am 56 yrs on fixed income of $1456.00 per month and cant afford or qualify for anything in Calif. I lived and worked here all my life. Very very depressing...I was even homeless for two years in my car until my niece took me in.
He has done a good job addressing the challenges of housing in San Francisco. I could easily live in the small space. The one problem I have is it has too many hard surfaces for a home. Except for the bed, everything felt like an office or commercial space. The folding chairs, benches, and standup chairs/tables don't give you too many options to just curl up and relax when you get home. Maybe the bench in the dining area needs to be able to convert to a lounge with soft seating.
I agree. If I lived there I'd have to buy a few big puffy pillows to throw around the place.
People who choose to live alone, no matter how small the apartment is, need a wardrobe that will take winter and summer clothes, a balcony at least big enough to share a private morning coffee with a friend outdoors and a kitchen with a professional exhaust, an oven and a decent size sink. An own washing machine is a must either incorporated in the kitchen or the bathroom and a decent glass enclosed shower is a must. A toilet room separated from the bathroom should be a health regulation! Young professionals don't want all the common social areas that have to be maintained and paid for, just the private apartment with a decent design for independent living with dignity. Please include car spaces along with the bike racks. Just because people choose to live in an apartment doesn't mean they don't want or don't need a car for the occasional road trip and to visit friends and family who live in the suburbs or actually require a car space for a company car or their work outside the city! Ask any student if they would prefer their own quiet space or a share accommodation and most will answer for a private apartment. Young adults need a place of their own not share social housing. Try living in these spaces before you try to cut costs!
You can get all of those things for $6000/momth
this is really disturbing
I agree. This guy skeeves me out.
I love Tiny Homes, but these do not have a homely feel. Like hospital rooms someone said.
This is a old video but those units look horrible.
Agenda 21 acclimatization..
Track mud in the bathroom?! Take your shoes off in the house. Wear shower sandals in the bathroom. Problem solved. That Euro-bath focuses on the need for utility in a small space. Perfect. Excellent concepts for livable spaces in all the overpopulated cities in the world. With outdoor spaces such as a small park and garden area surrounding this building, it would serve the needs of the mind as well as the body.
I don't mind developers urbanizing SF, or any south bay area city. I just wish they could build the buildings to go with the history and style of SF. The contemporary buildings are depressing..
This is like that experiment they did with rats, confining them to smaller and smaller spaces, adding barriers and putting more individuals in the space and documenting the change in social interactions. Ugh horrible.
What a great video and what a great man and visionary! I know he's a business man, but it seems like he really cares about the building and about the future residents..
hahahah..your going to love your prison.
single people will now live in cubicles too. This is modern American version of slave quarters, we just have nicer finishes in our corporate employee prisons then they did then. Smh. This is terrible.
I love the design aspect of these building but dislike what it means for a persons humanity. To me it mirrors a trend where people an work seem to reduced to it's lowest common denominator. The person is reduced to a unit of production and what that one unit of production needs to keep producing. Just enough cooking, living, sleeping and storing space for this to happen in. I can see how some city hipster tech workers will love it. But as a psychotherapist I see many depressed Tech hipsters wishing their life was richer. Paradoxically, i would quite like it.....
+Michael Caton Doesn't it depend on how you look at it? You're seeing it as a unit of production, but what if you saw it as trying to reduce your needs so they don't control you. So you pay less and get access to a city and what that entails: cultural life and even the outdoors in San Francisco. When I lived in SF in the '90s, I didn't have a car, but was able to walk/run/bike everywhere and there's some great nature all around (tons of parks and easy to bike across the Golden Gate to all the preserved land of the Marin Headlands).
Though I'm not surprised you see a lot of people wishing their life was richer, but is this due to their housing or because they've narrowly focused their goals instead of striving to become polymaths? Well, I'm sure you can't reduce it to one cause... After all that, I had to laugh at your last sentence.
I see the terms of our housing and employment as increasingly things that are dictated to us by larger global forces (The USA sneezes and the UK gets a cold) contributing to an ever increasing sense of alienation. The visible part of this would be the ever increasingly smaller living space more focussed to the ever efficient delivery of you to work.
My problem is not with the apartments design or location which I think is very clever but with that thing it acts as mirror to.
One question that was not asked was: How much? How much to rent or buy that small space in a great location? I suspect this would still be quite expensive and not available to most but I would like to be corrected on that.
Modern work dictates the terms of your involvement. Ever increasing working hours mean quite often, in London at least, workers collapse exhausted into a bar or buy more crap off the internet than spend time on cultural or activities. People are to afraid these days to live and love in ways that fulfil rather than inhibit. I would like to see that change but I think it begins with identifying the problem first of all.
+Kirsten Dirksen I think you're right on. Especially in the computer age with high bandwidth, UA-cam, Netflix, and other things, one can have a very rich life in a very small space, and vice versa. Living spaces are really expensive, and they're even more expensive when they're far larger than what you need them to be. Personally, I'd rather spend much less on a large living space, and far more on travelling, continuing education, and other things...and in turn, having less of a need to work or earn a certain amount every month just to cover expenses. This is especially true in a place where space as at such an ultra premium right now like San Fran....
Ultimately, I just realized I'm more of an independent spirited, country person awhile back. Thus, while I'd have little hesitation about living in a small RV, I doubt I'd want to live in the city even in a larger space for long. But if I had to live in the city, it'd be in a space like this, and I'd use the parks and public areas as my living room, as another video Kirsten posted awhile back talked about.
+Kirsten Dirksen I live in New York City so we already know how to live in limited space. The problem is, it's just too freaking expensive to live here or in San Francisco. Even if people are interested in having a smaller footprint and wanted to live in these beautiful micro apartments, we just can't afford it. These are built for trendy, yuppie people with money, not for the average working class people that just want a piece of the pie too. And that sucks!
+NoProGoPronto I just responded to another thread about how in San Francisco a big part of the problem is anti-growth people haven't allowed for high density development for decades so now the housing supply is really limited.
There's also the point that popular cities will always have an issue of a lot of people wanting to live there so not enough supply. Even if you limit prices, you're still stuck with a supply issue. In Stockholm, about 40% of their housing is rent-controlled and the wait list to get a place are 20 to 30 years long.
I would add a system to hang stuff on the walls without to have to nail anything. For hanging art, a rail could be put about and cables could be used to hang pictures at the desired hight. Or walls that you can pin stuff on. Or what if you want to put the TV on another wall. Is there a system of blinds? The windows are perfect to have plants, so a system of hooks to put up potted plants would be nice. Or a system with customized shelves. Also, the bed with the drawers underneath needs to glide seamlessly just as the kitchen drawers.