Because millennials are more likely to stay single longer, these communal living arrangements should flourish.
They are probably an extension of the mini-dorms around college campuses. Next year, our youngest will be splitting $9,800 per month to live with 13 other women in one apartment. Their landlord inherited a dozen apartment houses, all in Westwood! H/T daytrip:
Zander Dejah, 25, pays $1,900 a month rent to live in a downtown San Francisco house with at least 40 other people, many of whom sleep in bunk beds.
Dejah is a resident of The Negev, a communal living space that styles itself as a home for millennial tech workers to brainstorm ideas, write code and create apps, even if they have to share toilets and bathrooms with dozens of others. (Related photo essay: here)
Houses like The Negev, located in a neighborhood known as “SoMa” or South of Market, have cropped up around San Francisco as an influx of young professionals, many of whom are tech workers, have faced the city’s notoriously high rents and apartment shortages. It has three floors and roughly 50 rooms, filled with bunk beds, beer bottles and laptops, according to residents.
Dejah, born and raised in New York, graduated last year with a degree in computer science and math from McGill University. Unemployed, he moved to California six months ago and found his room at The Negev on Craigslist.
“I thought New York was expensive,” said Dejah, who quickly landed a job as a virtual reality engineer at consulting firm moBack. “It’s basically an extension of college. We sort of live in a frat house.”
The home is certainly filled with parties on weekends, but the residents make sure to sit down every Sunday for a communal dinner, akin to a traditional family gathering.
While some say communal housing provides a solution for many first-time workers fresh out of college, such housing also has created its share of controversy. Housing advocates have complained that this new dorm-like style of living has pushed up rents and forced longtime residents to move out.
Alon Gutman, who co-founded a company called The Negev and began leasing the building on Sixth street in 2014, said, “We have never made somebody move out of that building,” adding that his tenants pay 30 percent to 50 percent less than others in the neighborhood.
“We are trying to solve the housing crisis and increase density in a positive way.”
The Negev company runs nine communal properties, three of which are in San Francisco. The others are in Austin, Texas, and Oakland, California.
The Negev properties, generally in run-down, low-income neighborhoods, are restructured to accommodate a large number of tenants, Gutman explained.
It’s a commune until the economy takes a u-turn. Then they’ll call it a “favela.”
When I visited, as a kid, the place was a wonderland to me.
San Francisco is like a nerd cover band for San Francisco, unaware that they suck. Play me out, Animals:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8hv0M5etXFA
My guess is that you’ve already written about Joel Kotkin’s take, but if you haven’t worth noting: The High Cost of a Home Is Turning American Millennials Into the New Serfs
“This isn’t about lifestyle choices. It’s about a system in which the boomers are protecting their wealth and views at the expense of the rest of us.”
http://bit.ly/NewSerfRE
Thanks Bill – I haven’t seen that yet!
As Churchill said, the more you look back in history, the farther you can see ahead. He was well read. I guess that’s why he happily atomized as many nazis as he could, while some of the more squeamish around him questioned it.
Most Americans are historically as well as scientifically illiterate, especially the kids, despite the fact that most of them have what amounts to the library of Alexandria in the palm of their little hands.
So if the kids wind up a serf, they’re not being tricked. It’s because they prefer it.
Thinking is hard, and boring. For many young Americans, Freedom is like a bunch of cans tied to your tail. It’s nerve-wracking. Overrated. How can you get a good nights sleep, if you’re accountable for things you do all the time?
A good and fair Lord, taking care of their needs for only a few hours daily toil, and giving them enough extra time for binge watching Netflix, playing video games, sharing with other serfs on Serfbook, while traveling in little driverless cars to their awesome teeny homes, beats a tired, goofy old Republic any day. Anybody says different is probably just some old guy yappin’ malarkey!
YAPPIN’ MALARKEY!!
One of the many overused phrases these days is “thanks for your hard work”.
But it’s thrown around like the participation medals. Does anyone know what hard work is anymore?