You had a room just big enough for a bed, a desk, and a sink. Everything else was common.
If I was a developer I'd build a "dorm for adults" right next to places like Amazon, but at least around here zoning won't permit it.
It's great if you're single and don't have many possessions. Inexpensive, too.
Feeling a little agoraphobic with the above floor plan? Don't like those vast sweeps of empty space? No problem, try $875/mo for 147 square feet: https://seattle.craigslist.org/see/apa/d/seattle-apodment-su...
Carefully examine the bathroom photos. No sink! You wash your hands in the kitchenette. Easy enough, when it's three steps away. (After all, where would you put a bathroom sink? The entire apartment is the size of an RV.)
One upside: if the landlord gets on your nerves, it would be real, real easy to move out. A one-backpack apartment.
A couple of years ago I inquired about the prize in a room in a hotel in San Francisco I happened to walk up to -- the front desk person cautioned that it offered 'european style' shared bathrooms. plonk -- I never encountered a hotel in Europe with shared bathrooms, but I've never been to Albania either.
The hotels with shared bathrooms are very common even in Switzerland, and everywhere else in Europe.
The small apartments are more common the richer the country. Larger apartments are more common in the poorer countries. You can find the small ones in every capital city though.
Truly curious. Could you provide a link to one?
As a young lad (on a tight budget) I stayed in youth hostels in Europe and USA as well. Those (at that time) not only were equipped with shared bathrooms, but also commonly with bunk beds in dormitories (separated by gender -- yeah, such were the times) and usually expected you to take on chores. I enjoyed my stay as it allowed me to go to places I couldn't otherwise afford and meet like-minded young travelers, but it would be impossible to mistake those places for hotels.
Even if there is a troublemaker people can't get rid of, they'll graduate sooner or later and will be forced to move out.
I'm not familiar with varying types, but AFAIU (or hope), the organizer / owner is not usually the main employer. It's foremost a community where people live. Some people work there or self-employ, but it's not usually a corporate-dictated, top-down governed establishment, which would be something quite different. At least in the examples I know of.
There were a couple of places in this space when I was looking but I didn't go with them for a few reasons: - cost was high - contractual terms were long (6-12mo minimum) - reviews were mixed, but the general vibe was a "tragedy of the commons" type situation - location / transit links didn't appear great
I ended up boarding with an older couple for a while before finding a more traditional share house with other young professionals.
If I'd been able to try it out with a 1/2 month minimum I would've looked past the other issues to give it a chance, it seemed like it could've a great way to accelerate finding your feet in a new country/city
[1] https://therealdeal.com/2020/06/08/wework-may-abandon-welive...
Seems to be trying it, rebranded as 'co-living' as I imagine dormitories holds a bit of a stigma.
Now I know people shitting on suburbs is the fashion, but the fact is if you are the kind of person who has hobbies that don't involve going out and socializing a bedroom community is perfect. You get your own land and a detached home with plenty of space to do mostly whatever you want. Woodwork, swimming in a pool, running around with your dog, playing loud music and movies, hosting dinner parties, whatever. It's so much more comfortable for people who don't have urges to just "hang out".
I love in a sea of houses. Bu where I live I can take 30 minute walk to the doctor, or ironically, the gas station.
Doctors, dentists, hairdressers, cafes, bakeries and flower shops all fit nicely with housing.
Went home for Christmas and as part of it swung by the nursing home where my Grandma lives.
She is basically in actual prison for the past nine months. For a good part of it she was confined to her room. It appears that they've relaxed the restrictions after Coronavirus ripped through the place and everyone that didn't die is now immune. She is at least allowed to go sit in the lobby area now and talk with the other residents.
Nothing quite like watching a 98 year old woman break down in tears every time someone reminds her that she can't actually come outside and give us a hug or talk to us in person.
How do they know?
The only question is how long-lasting it is, and so far the answer is "indefinite / a long time".
“Huh well that was interesting”
so honestly theyll say whatever is convenient. nobody knows anything, nobody has any plan, we’ll see
Within 5-10 min walking distance we have all daily activity requirements like grocery stores, gyms, pharmacies, restaurants, bars, schools, large year-round indoor swimming pool that blows away any private pool that I've seen, etc. If I did want a car we have underground parking or I could buy a private garage in a self-storage warehouse type area nearby for parking it or using as a hobby workshop. The one thing I do miss is being able to crank up my electric guitar, still looking for a solution to that one. Maybe a music space that rents by the hour or something.
I don't miss the car centric lifestyle for a second, and I'm saying this as an amateur race car driver. With all the time I used to spend driving around for the most basic of activities, I now have much more time available for my family, hobbies, side projects or even the occasional nap. You can't buy this quality of life anywhere in the US at any price or income level.
I am a reluctant, but accomplished touring cyclist, and I've ridden hundreds of miles through American landscape that is positively hostile to pedestrians and vehicles operating at less-than-car scales. The assumption of cars has led urban designers to implement travel distances that are only grueling to traverse, and the interstitial spaces are inhospitable, bedecked with exhaust ports, bad lighting, narrow spaces or vast, entirely unfurnished without shade, let alone water or public facilities for miles, even, in larger towns. Sometimes, just crossing the street to go a kilometer I've found the American cityscape impassable without hopping in the car, and popping over a minimum of one (1) freeway exit.
That's just one aspect of the alien dimensions to which our environment's built.
Going from the Cupertino Hotel to One Infinite Loop on foot felt like I was risking life and limb, despite it having pedestrian lights [1].
[0] http://thetrendler.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Maps-Icons...
That road was a 3-lanes-each-way road with no pedestrian crossing points. We just had to run across when there was a gap. It wasn't a fast road - there were plenty of traffic lights for traffic purposes - but still, nothing for pedestrians.
https://themreport.com/daily-dose/09-02-2020/as-more-stay-ho...
So either the source claims that the average apartment has three or more bedrooms (and this is false, very few 3BR+ apartments are built in most buildings), or that the average apartment offers palatial luxury. Maybe they miscalculated?
Translation: "As someone that lives in desirable parts of high cost of living areas, even the largest premium units are below the average square footage mentioned in that article, I generally try not to think about it but it is fascinating to see, I think I can relate to other people that earn enough to comfortably live in these areas, but it is not common to ever talk about being financially stable in an expensive area, lets go back to pretending that we are all struggling and 'got a good deal' on our 900 sq ft penthouse."
I wanted to get a larger house with a garden before the pandemic (which is ridiculously expensive given the rent / value ratio in Europe is a joke) and the pandemics reinforced that tenfolds.
How long before the government lock us in our tiny homes again?
This is like saying buy a Hummer for that one off road drive you take in a decade and suffer its drawbacks for 99% of your use case.
Have vast sprawling houses protected US from COVID-19 ?
Let's make data driven decisions please.
The problem of relying too much on "data-driven decisions" is that it leads to absurd optimizations that make the overall system more fragile.
We had only one pandemic in our lifetime, yet. But don't forget about Avian Flu and Swine Flu also happened and caused concern less than 10 years ago. The world is way more connected and we never had so many people being able to go across the world spreading a virus in less than 24h. The likelihood of another pandemic threat is increasing with time, not decreasing.
If anything, one of the lessons that I hope we take from this year is that we need to think our environments (on all scales, from the bedrooms in our homes to our cities and schools for our kids and the city altogether) for robustness and longevity, not for cost, practicality or marketability.
https://eurocities.eu/stories/reclaiming-the-streets/
and an article in the Guardian about Barcelona https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/may/17/superblocks-r...
I'm personally heartened by people's moves to de-focus the car in urban places.
Internet communication, with its much richer modes of communication, is essentially social junk food. It's not a real substitute for meatspace interactions, but it satiates the hunger for socialization. Thus people feel ever more connected and ever more lonely at the same time - loneliness being social malnourishment.
Even here in the Bay Area I live just a couple blocks down from a huge and well-appointed Elks lodge, and just a few miles away in downtown Mountain View, there is an Eagles lodge across the street from an Odd Fellows, itself a block away from a Freemason lodge.
If something exists but people aren't using it, it isn't the right solution. It might be hard to say why it isn't, it could even just be a marketing problem, but nevertheless the problem isn't solved by its existence.
I live in the mid-west, where these organizations were very common. I'm ~50 years old, and I don't know ANYONE who's in one of them, and every one of them around the area that I drive by is in disrepair. I expect them to disappear with the boomer generation.
Another feature of my location are all the small "mainline" churches (Presbyterian, Methodist, et. al.), who hover around 30-50 people, and have no members younger than 60. There's a business opportunity coming to buy up a lot of prime real estate when these churches fold in another 10 years.
I think a huge problem with finding "community" now is the utter isolation caused by social media and access to the thinnest slice of the news you want to tolerate. It has created a culture where people are only tolerant to their SPECIFIC view of the world, and it's just really hard to find people who think EXACTLY like you.
I actually tried to join a couple of those sorts of organizations, and I found them all very off-putting. Between the weird elitism, the arbitrary and time consuming hurdles for membership and the feeling that everybody there felt 20+ years older than me (even when they probably weren't) didn't make it seem like a good time.
I like the concept though, I just wish there was one that felt more up to date and actually felt like a sort of thing I'd want to join.
I think just talking to an Apple dad about his life and priorities would be extremely eye-opening for a lot of people on HN.
For the tech and maker types, a hackerspace/makerspace might be more appropriate.
Part of the problem is many are invitation-only clubs. That kept them mono-culture and full of the 'right people'. And the current members have at some time quit inviting? Don't know why.
So, basically people just wanted to hang out but now everyone thinks they want to take over the world.
Advertising basically works this way. Nudges demonstrably work at a population level without anyone feeling coerced. In aggregate, for the population as a whole, it likely makes a statistical difference, even though no one in particular feels like it makes a deciding factor. Like, say, with organ donation. Make opt in default, an enrollment goes up.
Unless some other factor associated with suburban living cancels the effect, it seems extremely unlikely that it does not make a difference, even if every individual feels like "the only thing that dictates it is my desire/initiative/ability".
Plus, most work related social functions are quite cringey.
Just give me my pay-check. I'll skip the booze and small talk with coworkers I should be friend with so I have less excuses to quit.
- They miss their kids
- They prefer friends and activities much closer to where they live
- Transit home gets far more complicated the later it gets, particularly when alcohol is involved
Big contrast to being able to catch an underground/subway within a few minutes with no planning, and fall back to a relatively affordable Uber if you get carried away and miss the last one
Socializing, there can be a substantial difference between interaction and meaningful interaction. Both can require time away from favored/necessary activities; both can have multiple consequences (desirable or not). A perceived need for constant contact may be unhealthy.
Tech is a crappy substitute for the real thing (as E. M. Forster famously noted), so has some destructive potential.
I agree though that it's annoying that going out = spending a lot of money.
It used to be, 100 or 200 years ago, that your workplace, your home, and your usual hang-out place were all within reasonable walking distance of each other. It wasn't a huge deal to go out and meet new people, as you'd naturally bump into them every day.
Nowadays we have a large portion of people in bedroom communities, isolated in a sea of houses. They drive in isolated cars to their workplaces, swing by to get some Starbucks on the way in, and that's the extent of their social interaction. Apart from libraries and parks, there's not many places that you can regularly go and just "hang out" without spending money just to exist in that space. It's incredibly easy to go for weeks or months without any substantial social contact outside of work or your few neighbors.
I feel like this is a reason why internet organizations and social media have exploded in popularity, for that matter. It's the new "default place" to hang out and get social interaction, for better or for worse.
(I expanded on this in an article I wrote, https://invisibleup.com/articles/31/, if you want to check that out.)