Hacker houses are proliferating in the Bay Area

Hacker houses are proliferating in the Bay Area

By Lynda Carson

Making money from the housing crisis with hacker houses for some people comes naturally, even if it is not done legally. Times are little different now, than it was during the gold rush back in 1848, when people made their fortune by exploiting others.

Shady characters are getting involved in the latest gold rush that has to do with making a fortune off of the housing crisis, and the landlords running the various hacker houses in the Bay Area, are making their fortunes.

Some of the better known hacker houses have included Chez JJ in San Francisco, Startup Embassy in Palo Alto, Casa Hacker in San Jose, 939 Makers Club in Walnut Creek, Colliding Club (3 houses in San Francisco), and 20 Mission in San Francisco.

But not all hacker houses are successful, and some including Chez JJ, have been put out of business. Not all hacker houses are legal, or up to code, and some may not even have permits to operate as rental housing. The owner/operators of a hacker house may not have a real estate license at times, as is required in California for property managers who manage rental properties.

The hacker houses are here, and even in Oakland they want your money. As much as they can grab. In the name of the housing crisis, a whole new breed of hustlers pretending to be landlords have taken the concept of homeless shelters, transitional housing, crash pads and flop houses to a whole new level of exploitation, and they are raking in BIG MONEY hand over fist.

Imagine that. The housing crisis has become so bad in the Bay Area, that a glorified crash pad/homeless shelter run by startupbed.com, is charging their clients as much as $1,200 to $1,800 a month to sleep in a flop house full of strange people, you have never met before.

Other entities operating crash pads and flop houses are flourishing under the guise of so-called hacker houses and other names. It costs a small fortune to stay in these flop houses that essentially are nothing more than illegal transitional housing projects, for so-called techies. Tenants in hacker houses may not have the rights of other tenants that are protected by just cause eviction protections, or rent control, and tenants should know their rights before moving into one of these flop houses.

The shady landlords operating hacker houses that appear to be little more than spruced up flop houses, fleece the public mercilessly, and have very little oversight in these locations including building inspections, or property managers with real estate licenses, to manage the residential housing sites in a lawful manner.

Airbnb is deeply involved in the hacker housing schemes taking place that involve taking the rental units off of the rental market in the Bay Area. Many hacker houses are illegal rental units that have been created to exploit young tech workers, by turning the housing sites into money making ventures for the new breed of greedy landlords.

Lynda Carson may be reached at tenantsrule [at] yahoo.com

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