Daily Times

Kay Wilson packed up her life in a hurry and moved to Los Angeles… only to find that what she paid in Pennsylvania for a nice studio apartment would only get her a 2.9-square-meter box in California.

Her new home is a capsule, inspired by the famous hotels in Japan.

Wilson arrived a month ago at UP(st)ART, a community for young people with artistic aspirations in need of an affordable place to live.

Each room contains up to six capsules, which Wilson describes as “cozy.” They contain a single bed, a bar for hanging clothes, a few compartments for storing shoes and other items and an air vent.

By most standards, the accommodation is still not cheap — $750 per month plus taxes. That works out at around $800, which is slightly more than the 26-year-old was paying in Bethlehem, around 70 miles outside Philadelphia.

“I couldn’t afford a studio by myself. Not at all,” she told AFP. “It’s $1,300 or more.”

Jeremiah Adler, founder of UP(st)ART, said each capsule costs roughly half the rent of a studio in Los Angeles — the US entertainment capital, and one of its most expensive cities.

Cheaper options exist, but UP(st)ART offers a good, central location and modern buildings equipped with a gym, dance classes, recording studio, art workshop and free cleaning and laundry services.

Among the rules: women and men sleep apart, and having sex is not an option.

Still, the capsule-living concept is also catching on in other expensive US cities including New York.

For Dana Cuff, an architect and professor at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), this type of community presents only a short-term solution.

“We basically need to be developing a huge range of options for the kinds of housing that are available,” she said. “To me, co-living pods… are symptoms of this deep need for a much greater range of housing alternatives.”