What would you do if you couldn’t afford to pay rent in the city of your dreams?
For Peter Berkowitz, the solution to sky-high San Francisco rent has been to build a box, or a “pod” as he calls it, in the living room of a friend’s apartment. The pod cost $1300 to build, and he pays $400 per month for the space, making the total monthly cost roughly $508 per month.
“Yes, living in a pod is silly,” Berkowitz writes in a blog post. “But the silliness is endemic to San Francisco’s absurdly high housing prices—the pod is just a solution that works for me.”
Berkowitz explains to Fortune that the inspiration behind the pod was the Japanese idea of “capsule hotels,” which allow guests to essentially rent beds.
“If you just make a plywood box it probably isn’t going to be that great,” says. The key is to make the space practical and comfortable, something the 25-year-old illustrator says he spent a lot of time doing in his previous, traditional bedrooms as well.
“People are typically surprised that I would want to live in a pod, but I think they tend to underestimate how pleasant a pod can be if it’s designed smartly. It’s the coziest bedroom I’ve ever had. It’s the only bed I’ve had with a fold-down desk, a slanted + cushioned backboard, and uniformly ideal light for reading,” he writes in the post.
This article originally appeared on Fortune.com
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