A 19-bedroom luxury commune for budding trust fund artists (BTFA) has already been roundly skewered by the internet, with good reason. Because really, what's not to hate? A bedroom in this shared Crate & Barrel-appointed Crown Heights brownstone—roughly five people per floor—costs between $1,800 and $1,950, and the emetic buzzwords of startup culture are all snugly packaged into the pitch text: Community driven. Working space. Vibrant neighborhood. Customer experience. Wireless access points. Puddles of vomit. Whoops, that last one wasn't in there.
So yes, you could advocate for burning Common and its brushed steel appliances to the ground, but such condensed communal living is actually a great boon for our famously high real estate prospects. Would you rather have 19 sentient Herschel backpacks driving up rents around the city? Or would you prefer to have them contained in their fully-stocked kitchens and bathrooms, bathed and fed by their paid-for Help? Think about Murray Hill: Perhaps you never want to visit, but at least its distasteful elements are confined to a relatively small space; to lose it, as a friend once put it, would be like lancing a boil full of spiders wearing Topsiders.
The start-up dwelling—located at 1162 Pacific Street, across the street from a 350-bed homeless shelter—has already received more than 250 applications, a number that will have surely multiplied five-fold by the time you're done with this sentence. That's OK, though. Founder and CEO Brad Hargreaves means to be picky. “We’re looking at creating a vetted community,” he told the Post. “We’re targeting people who really want to be part of a community, rather than just looking for a transitional place to live.”
And remember, it could be worse. It could be a Glass-walled Highrise Penis.
