SAN FRANCISCO — By now, the high price of rent in and around San Francisco has become at once a familiar lament and an easy punchline. In 2014, BuzzFeed highlighted nine private islands that cost less than an apartment in the California tech capital; a year later, a local website found the same of five castles.
Now, the next logical step in San Francisco has taken shape — in the form of a literal box.
This makeshift bedroom, which its owner prefers to call a pod, is no larger than a wide bookshelf and inconspicuously stationed at one corner of an apartment living room in the Sunset District neighborhood. Its exterior resembles a large crate, while its inside houses a twin bed, a fold-up desk and some LEDs.
At 8 feet long and 4½ feet tall, the wooden box requires Peter Berkowitz to duck to get inside, but he assured The Washington Post in a recent phone interview that his new home is “honestly very comfortable.”
The box sits in an apartment where the roommates living in conventional bedrooms pay about $1000 for rent. For $400, Berkowitz lives in his pod and has full access to the amenities. Constructing the pod cost $1,300.
