Dreaming of Digital Glory At Hacker Hostels 71
An anonymous reader writes "The NY Times has a story about a small chain of managed residences that has sprung up in the Bay Area to provide a cheap place where programmers, designers, and scientists can live and work. These 'hacker hostels' are a place for aspiring entrepreneurs to gather, share, and refine ideas. 'Hackers ... have long crammed into odd or tiny spaces and worked together to solve problems. In the 1960s, researchers at the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory slept in the attic and, while waiting for their turn on the shared mainframe computer, sweated in the basement sauna. When told about the hacker hostels, Ethan Mollick, an assistant professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania who studies entrepreneurship, said they reminded him of his days in the last decade studying at M.I.T., where graduate students would have bunk beds inside their small offices.'"
Re:From the article (Score:2, Informative)
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What could possibly go wrong? (Score:5, Informative)
"But inside, in a third-floor apartment, there are enough Ikea bunk beds to sleep 10 people, crammed into two bedrooms." And they mention that the house "captain" gets his/her own room, meaning you have 11 people in a single apartment.
This violates so many different housing codes, it's not even funny. Cramming that many people into such a small space is downright dangerous. Fire, sanitation, etc., ... all problems. These are not niggling little "lets find something to fine you for" issues... this is a serious safety problem.
"Katy Levinson, who runs another hacker house, declined to give its exact location because she had heard about several houses being shut down after running into trouble with landlords."
She doesn't even OWN the house? That tells me two things:
1) She's badly violating the terms of any lease agreement, which certainly would not allow subletting of this magnitude.
2) She's utterly ignoring any landlord-tenant laws herself.