San Francisco friends, we bring you Apartment Sadness, an SFist column that was once a more frequent feature on the site, back in the heady days of the early to mid-2010s, when it seemed like rents in the city would never stop spiking, and landlords would never stop carving out new rentable spaces where there never should have been one.
Maybe, just maybe, five years and change since the pandemic took a bite out of rents and gave many people who were working from home in SF the opportunity to upsize their spaces, apartment rents and demand are going nuts again. What that has meant in the past, when Apartment Sadness first launched, was that people with empty spaces, no matter the size or condition, started advertising them for rent for often ridiculous sums. And every granny in the Sunset with an unoccupied basement had some younger relative install a sink and a mini fridge and call it a studio, charging $2,000 a month.
In recent years, this column went dormant, mostly for lack of material. The kooky Craigslist listings were no longer a dime a dozen, and the joke — laughing-through-tears as it always was — got stale. But now, dear readers, here we are, with a Craiglist ad that bubbled up onto Reddit this week with the headline, "Serious question, is this legal?"
I located the listing, which is real and was posted four days ago. This grand, 120-square-foot single bedroom/bathroom combo in Lower Pacific Heights comes with the tagline "no sharing," which clearly refers to the bathroom amenities themselves.
A loft platform allows for a twin mattress, and the ability to backflip out of bed, nail the landing, and immediately use the toilet.
Is it a bedroom with a bathroom bleeding into it, or a bathroom with a loft bed in it? You decide! You can easily imagine that both the steam from the shower and the scents created during the toilet's use will both just be part of the charm of living here, and that tiny vent up near the ceiling will not make any difference.
Missing from these two photos is the ladder or trampoline needed to get into the bed, for those without terrific upper-body strength anyway.
Oh, but that is in another photo, that shows how the room also has its own back-door entrance/egress.
There's the way up to the bed! The only remaining concern here would be the placement of other furniture. Like, would you want a couch facing the toilet? Maybe some bookshelves around the toilet to create a pooping nook?
The industrial vaccuum in the first photo and that bit of particle board by the back door suggest that a bit of construction or remodeling was just taking place here, so maybe this is a newly created rental unit — which would feed into the narrative that everyone is again trying to cash in on some new wave of demand, like they did back in 2013/2014.
In addition to one's own toilet and shower, there in the room, there is also the promise of "your own fridge" in the ad, though that fridge is not pictured and it's not like there's space here for a kitchenette.
The remaining photos just show the backyard, which the renter is promised access to, along with that "shed" — which, has a sliding glass door? Could it also be a living space?
When using the back entrance in the winter, it appears there are wooden planks provided to traverse what will surely be a mud pit. And those used-to-be-white patio chairs look to be up for grabs.
As for other perks, utilities are included in the $1,500 rent figure, but there is no laundry on site.
Also, there is no word on whether the renter of this room would be allowed into the rest of the apartment/house. The ad makes no mention of kitchen access, common areas, or anything like that — so you'd best assume those things are off the table. What do you expect in this economy?! For $1,500!?
