What If Where You Live Was a Subscription?

By Futurist Thomas Frey

The emerging model of affordable living as a service — and why solving the housing problem may also solve the relevance problem

A Conversation That Made Me Revise My Thinking

I recently came across a company exploring what they called “affordable living as a service.” The phrase itself is worth sitting with for a moment, because it reframes something we have always treated as a fixed cost — shelter — as something that could be delivered, bundled, optimized, and priced the way we now think about software, transportation, or entertainment.

The concept is still forming at the edges. But the problem it is responding to is not. The American housing crisis is one of the most consequential and most underappreciated barriers to human potential operating in this country right now — and the standard toolkit for addressing it has largely failed. New approaches, even partially formed ones, deserve serious attention. Because what’s happening to American workers, families, and communities as housing becomes increasingly unaffordable is not just a real estate problem. It is a relevance problem. And it is worsening every year.

Continue reading… “What If Where You Live Was a Subscription?”

Can’t find an affordable home? Try living in a pod

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It’s dorm life for adults: A PodShare co-living building in Venice Beach, Calif., where dorm beds go for about $1,400 per month with shared kitchens and bathrooms.

The cost of housing is out of reach for many residents in cities such as Los Angeles and Seattle. One solution is called co-living, and it looks a lot like dorm life. Co-living projects are trying to fill a vacuum between low-income and luxury housing in expensive housing markets where people in the middle are left with few choices.

Nadya Hewitt lives in a building in Los Angeles run by a company called PodShare, where renters (or “members,” in company lingo) occupy “pods.” The grand tour of 33-year-old Hewitt’s home takes place sitting on her bed as she points out the various things she keeps within arm’s reach: a lamp, sunglasses, a water bottle, a jar of peanut butter.

Continue reading… “Can’t find an affordable home? Try living in a pod”

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