San Francisco Real Estate Is So Absurd That a Guy Is Paying $400 to Live in a Box Inside a Living Room

These are end times.

I've lived the last decade of my life in New York and Los Angeles. Now, these are both amazing cities with many wonderful things going for them, but "cheap real estate" is not one of them. No, these are two expensive, gentrifying cities. And yet, when you put them up against the shit show that is San Francisco, both of them are almost like watching a movie from the '70s when someone says they pay $150 for rent. San Francisco real estate is so nuts (the average price for a one bedroom is a bonkers $3,670) that one man has come up with a terrifying and sad solution. (Though, to be fair, he still seems pretty happy about it.)

Peter Berkowitz is a freelance illustrator and after living semi-unhappily in Oakland and dreaming of being in San Francisco, Peter came up with an idea. What if he lived in a wooden box inside a friend's apartment and paid an incredibly discounted rent? Peter took the idea to his friend, who took the idea to his roommates. They agreed, and Peter built a "pod" in the living room.

Now sure, it'd be easy to make fun of this idea, so I will.

This is insane. No city is worth this. Especially not San Francisco. Just live in Oakland. Oakland's great! The Golden State Warriors are in Oakland! MC Hammer is from Oakland! When you feel that overwhelming longing to live in Frisco (Which I'm saying, because people from there hate it. Good. Your city isn't better than that embarrassing name.) just go there for dinner or something. Or even better, just lay at home, in Oakland and watch Looking on HBOGo. Also, that friend you're staying with is not a friend. If a friend of mine asked me if he could live in a box in my living room, I'd ask him if everything was alright, then I'd help him find an actual place to live, and set him up with a good psychiatrist. I definitely wouldn't have him basically build a walk-in closet in my house and then have him pay me money for the privilege of sleeping in it. This is worse than Tiny House Hunters. At least then, they don't want their tiny house to be inside their friend's house. They just want it to sit in a friend's driveway, all the while said friend desperately wants that tiny house out of there, but won't say anything, because they're trying to be cool, until their resentment festers and grows and then one night they burn the tiny house to the ground, effectively ending the friendship. That's how this is supposed to go.

But lest you thought this story couldn't get more annoying, Berkowitz is planning on turning this "idea" into a start-up. According to Vice:

The goal is to help people avoid paying almost $900 to live in a tent, and to help renters supplement their incomes by hosting their own box-dwellers. Berkowitz promises a reasonable price for the pods, because he's more focused on honing his craft than making a ton of cash.

And don't worry you can still get busy in a box:

Berkowitz, who is single, swears it's nice in there––and soundproof, too. "If I meet someone and that person is disgusted by the idea of a box, then maybe I should be spending time with someone more akin to myself," he says. "It's not a disgusting place to be. I'm not being unreasonable when I say it's nicer than most people's bedrooms."

Yes you are, Peter. You are being unreasonable when you say that. Your box is not nicer than most people's bedrooms. The way I can tell is that your thing is called a "box" (or, being generous, a "pod") while those people's things are called "bedrooms" The fact that their things have the word "room" baked right into the name indicates that their bedrooms are, you know, rooms. Also they can probably stand up in their rooms. But other than that you're totally right.

H/T Allie Conti at Vice.