Luke Iseman has figured out how to afford the San Francisco Bay area. He lives in a shipping container.
The Wharton School graduate’s 160-square-foot box has a camp stove and a shower made of old boat hulls. It’s one of 11 miniature residences inside a warehouse he leases across the Bay Bridge from the city, where his tenants share communal toilets and a sense of adventure. Legal? No, but he’s eluded code enforcers who rousted what he calls cargotopia from two other sites. If all goes according to plan, he’ll get a startup out of his response to the most expensive U.S. housing market.
Iseman collects $1,000 a month for each of the 11 structures parked in the 17,000-square-foot warehouse he rents for $9,100. Tenants include a Facebook Inc. engineer, a SolarCity Corp. programmer and a bicycle messenger.
– From last year’s post: The Rent is Too Damn High – San Fran Residents Pay $1,000 a Month to Live in Shipping Containers
Welcome to the new normal, where in bubble communities, $250,000 per year is now a middle class income.
Nothing to see here.
From CBS News:
PALO ALTO (CBS SF) — Palo Alto is seeking housing solutions for residents who are not among the region’s super-rich, but who also earn more than the threshhold to qualify for affordable housing programs.
The city council has unanimously passed a housing plan that would essentially subsidize new housing for what qualifies as middle-class nowadays, families making from $150,000 to $250,000 a year.
Sky-rocketing housing prices in Palo Alto have left some in limbo; with teachers, firefighters and other government workers not earning enough to afford cost of living.
Randy Bean says while she still loves her Palo Alto neighborhood, she can’t help but notice the changes that are making it unrecognizable.
Some of the small two-bedroom, one-bath homes on her block are worth between $1.5 and $2 million – as teardowns. That’s just what the dirt is worth.
“Prices have just gone through the roof, making it unaffordable for middle-class people, your firefighters, your teachers, and, frankly, some of your doctors,” Palo Alto Vice Mayor Greg Scharff said.
“We have people struggling to make it at a quarter-million dollars a year,” Bean said. “That’s a terrible thing.”
For related articles, see:
The Rent is Too Damn High – San Fran Residents Pay $1,000 a Month to Live in Shipping Containers
Doing God’s Work – San Francisco Church Sprays Homeless People with Water to Keep Them Away
Political Activists May be Banned from San Francisco’s Public Transportation System
In Liberty,
Michael Krieger
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