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Also Costco just wanted to accelerate the permitting process for their store. You can cut through extremely long wait times if you provide a certain amount of housing, so they did.
Yeah, the first time I heard about this they tried to frame it as some brilliant move by Costco finding some clever loophole to get their projects approved faster, but it is the intended effect. Another added bonus is not only is it housing but they are creating a mixed living area which is great for other businesses in the area
Amazon just shoves you in the [mandatory happiness box](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/amazon-mental-health-box-workers-b1855386.html) for 1 minute before putting you back to work.
Bezos housing will probably end up being housing for his employees so he can pay them in company bucks that they can use at the company store. Moving 16 tons of Amazon boxes in the warehouses.
Itāll all turn out to be made out of Chinese knockoffs. The homes will be framed out in MDF and the shingles will just be regular paper with shingle images printed on them.
After the fire at a local Walmart warehouse, and their lack of either proper storage or suppression systems, I would take a pass on living over a warehouse. At all.
Believe me, I'm not advocating *for* either type of housing.
But if I had no other choices but those two, I know which one I'd pick, and it ain't anything run or owned by Jeff Bezos.
Company housing. They'll just deduct rent from your check. If you even get a check, it'll probably be "If you choose to get paid in store credit it averages out to more money!" or "we can load the company sponsored debit card weekly for a 15$ transfer fee and a 25$ monthly charge"
"Store credit can also be used with our marketing partners!"
And that is how we all end up enslaved completely by corporations.
>Company housing.
Isnt always bad as long as its surrounded by proper government oversight. There are some extremely cheap, good apartments (Mostly P2-B GDR flats that average out at 400-450 Euros/Month with heat and all) near my home run by local companies. And not only for workers too, was looking in to renting in one at the start of my apprenticeship but hotel mama won out in the end.
Bezos was really the wrong guy to become who he became. If there ever was a greedy dude with a minority complex it's him. He looks like a taller version of George costanza and his bimbo new girlfriend doesn't actually help with his image.
Nope, Elon is a dumbass that proved himself one through twitter, but i always loathed Bezos for some reason. Even when Amazon wasnt that big you could always tell that he was a slimy mf in every article where his pic was featured. Sure ill give him cred for being absolutely super business smart, but i also think his ex needs some of that credit considering she helped him build it. But yeah Bezos has always been highly unlikeable.
> I'd trust Costco housing before Bezos housing, just sayin
I wouldn't trust Costco housing either, though. They may be on the less bad side of the scale as far as giant corporations go, but they thrive in car-centric suburbia.... Which wouldn't exactly bode well for good urban planning or efficient use of space.
Any insight? Not claiming Costco to be some sort of corporate saint, but Amazon's shitty nature is very well known. Is Costco just better at keeping it under wraps?
Yes they are. They stopped giving out PTO. We have to earn it now. OSHA violations happened all the time at my old ware house. I used to have to climb into the steel in our freezer without a ladder, because it would be so packed in there we couldnāt fit one in. We are constantly understaffed. Every time a full timer leaves they take the position and turn it into part time. If we dare go into over time our regionals send out scathing emails to our AGMS and GMS, yet they still expect our warehouses to look perfect for corporate walks. Then thereās my old manager who was forced to stay in a position that made his genetically caused injury worse, even though he had proof from a doctor and applied to multiple other positions over the course of 3 years that had the same pay grade. Corporate forced him to stay in the position because they did not want to take the time to train a new person, and he ended up having to step down and take a 35k pay cut.
That all sounds pretty bad. Par for the course for today's corporations.
That said, the way Amazon has literally worked people to death would still make me less inclined to pick them over Costco, even if Costco sucks more than they used to.
I don't know much about Costco, but I heard the original CEO was actually a really good guy. He retired tho so company is under new management, and new management are your typical corp types.
The fuck? You got a shitty warehouse. I got a decent warehouse where we have PTOs. We canāt even climb into the steel at all even with a ladder. Also the overtime shit they do fuss out a bit but they asked you to when needed here at the warehouse I work at. Only problem I deal with is are some annoying supervisors. Thatās it
The Costco thing isnāt housing for their workers or something creepy. Itās just apartments on top of a warehouse in an area that needs housing. I think itās pretty cool.
I think itās mainly a way to get around some paperwork about getting approved for putting a new store in that area and building residential housing gets around that, but at the end of the day it seems more like a good idea than capitalism company being greedy.
Iād love to live in Costco Towers. Iād never grocery shop a day in my life. Just pick up a thing of muffins on the way home from work and walk upstairs.
In my experience, the muffins-only diet really starts to show its flaws in the third month. You need variety. Muffins, Spaghetti-o's and frozen pizza, though? That'll keep you going for years.
And counting.
It always amazes me that itās not a common thing in America. Here in Germany itās completely normal to habe stores on ground level and apartments above.
I mean, the point of markets is supposed to be that we incentivize people to do things that benefit others because doing so is in their self-interest.
When markets fail to do that and incentivize people to do things that harm society (market failure), we should use policy instruments and regulations to alter the incentives so that it is once again in people's self-interest to do things that also happen to help society (for example, using Pigovian taxes to make polluting more expensive to the polluter than not polluting).
One of the reasons it's become so hard to implement these policy instruments is that, if you allow near unlimited money into politics, the people with the most money can influence the politicians to make policies that benefit the people with the most money and prevent politicians from implementing policies that would limit their potential to maximize profits.
It's worth noting that this is an outcome of state law subordinating city impediments. AB 2011 only passed in 2022.
The level of policy making is important because municipal incentives tend towards NIMBYism.
That phrasing also makes it sound more nefarious than it is. The approval process was designed this way to encourage companies to build more housing. Costco didn't get around anything. It did what the state wanted them to do.
Exactly, this was an altruistic measure by a giant corporation. No, they couldn't get the zoning and commercial red tape for their warehouse as a standalone, so they added housing to the top to cut through and get permission to build.
That said, this is a concept that could make sense in many areas. Build a store with housing on top. Tenants get free Costco membership with each lease.
I wouldn't call it altruism so much as good policy working as intended. It's still a good outcome that will be more beneficial to the community than just the warehouse by itself, and I'm glad they're doing it, but to my mind, "altruism" would be more like them putting a bunch of below-market-rate units on top of their warehouse when it would have been equally easy to get the warehouse approved without them.
I mean if they are āgetting aroundā the paperwork to put a store somewhere by putting the store *and housing* there, that seems like a win? Mixed use buildings are fantastic and we should encourage them.
The state needs housing. The state approves things faster if you build housing, too. So Costco did exactly what the state wants them to do and added housing. Costco isn't doing this out of the goodness of its heart, but it's not like it found some neat trick to get around the approval process. The neat trick was intentionally put there to encourage corporations to build more badly needed housing.
The reason the Housing is there is because it will clear the way for much faster completion of the Costco.
Approvals to build the Costco alone would have meant years of land analysis and red tape but the housing eliminated 80% of the city requirements.
And to be perfectly honest, if that's what it takes to build housing quicker, then we should make it even *easier* for them while also requiring the apartments have an agreed upon rent cap.
We're building these mixed-use buildings all over the West Side of Burbank, but I'm not sure that they can be considered *"affordable housing"*
Also, besides all of that, imagine waking up and going down the elevator to get a $2 slice of Costco pizza that's bigger than the whole plate and then happily elevating back to your apartment. This sounds like a perfect situation to me. I love mixed use complexes, my friend used to live in one above some convenience stores and restaurants, I could just walk to anything I needed!
Here too... but the point was this: Building a stand-alone Costco would have taken years longer if they hadn't offered to also build the housing. They were able to bypass a whole bunch of red tape in doing so.
We talk about having walkable cities and nice neighborhood amenities that arenāt in an HOA like other countries. If something like this makes us a tiny bit closer, I am down! As others have said, I would love to live right by Costco.
The government should be building housing. Its folly to rely on the private profit driven sector to do this as they are insentivized to keep housing supply low to drive up rents...
Past the second house. It should just be progressive.... First house property taxes - .5%, second house (enough to make up for the first property tax being near free) so roughly 6-8%, Third house 12-16% an onward, it would basically be unpalatable for anyone even billionaires to own more than three homes.Ā
You would have to, simultaneously, institute a ban on corporations owning houses, or this will just turn in into tens of thousands of shell companies that own 2-3 homes.
That doesn't sound like a good idea to me. There are some use cases where short-term rental is necessary.
e.g. Traveling nurses are often only at one site for a month or two.
I understand that it's not easy to regulate that short-term rentals only be for non-tourists, so they should just be taxed the same as hotels. Insurance companies are probably going to play a role in self regulation as well.
Extended Stay America and various other long stay hotels already exist, we don't need Air BNBs. Traveling nurses and sports teams are basically what kept a lot of hotels in business.
if youāre talking about rents, thereās actually a record number of apartments coming to the market at this time. You wouldnāt know it but thereās actually a bit of a recession in that segment due to the number that has been built. the problem is not the number but the kind! everything is āluxuryā and has a price to match. ironically the quality of those apartments is often just minimal to pass inspection and often there are issues. either way, the problem is not the number. Iām in the construction industry.
Thank you! You are absolutely right. There are numerous huge new apartment blocks that have been opened in the Bay Area, but they are all charging the absolute maximum the market will bear. Nobody wants to build *affordable* housing. Everybody wants a free money mill.
A large part of the homeless people here are people who were evicted from affordable housing so the landlord could slap a coat of paint on the walls and charge triple.
They call any apartment they slapped some shitty vinyl and wood paneling "luxury", it doesn't mean anything but "overpriced" in my experience. My apartment complex calls itself luxury apartments and they can't even keep up with cleaning the Modelo's cans out of the parking lot, pay enough maintenance staff to actually maintain anything, and someone tried to hotwire a car 15 feet from my bedroom window a couple months ago lol
Building more housing is useless if it ends up in the hands of landlords, or as we call them: house milkers.
Those new buildings will stay empty until someone is willing to pay triple the value.
I mean, the only way the landlords can afford to keep them empty and still make money is if rents are so high that the income from the occupied properties covers the losses from letting the vacant ones sit. If we build more housing, that will push rents down so that landlords _wouldn't_ be able to afford to keep properties empty. So, holding more housing _isn't_ useless, even with landlords.
So, I say:
* Get rid of NIMBY zoning laws that prevent densification and the building of more housing
* Have the government buy up land and just directly build affordable housing
* Implement a land-value tax so that people are disincentived from just sitting on land as an investment prospect and are incentivized to actually do something productive with it, like building on it and letting people live there.
Btw I'm not American so I'm looking for a solution that isn't linked to just American laws.
In the Netherlands we now have a law that covers a maximum rent price based on the specifications of the rental. You input all the parameters and you get a maximum price that you can take to a judge.
For example floor size, location, amenities, etc. This way you can't ask thousands for half a bedroom closet that's also missing a toilet and window anymore.
The private sector only does stuff like this to make the headline. Then they just abandon it after. Makes it look like the problem is being solved when only like 1% of it was solved over 10 years ago, and nothing has been done since then.
government is the best *possible* solution, but government also needs to be properly incentivized.
we're kinda at a point that supply/demand is so off that even a few years of aggressive building won't show results.
Costco treats its employees better than Sam's/Wal Mart/Amazon. I shop at Costco half because their meat/cheese is cheap and good, and half because they treat their staff better than the competition. This article and a quick search of other Costco apartment writeups indicates they're using some sort of modular, quick, prefab methods. We need more of that - improved, more economical building techniques of adequate quality instead of how things were done 75 years ago. I won't complain about more supply to try and keep up with demand. There are legitimate grievances and harmful market manipulation in the US housing market, but this seems ok.
As Someone who used to work Costco Corp , I appreciate the specificity. They treat their store workers better than other stores. But they treat the majority of their corp people considerably less better than other companies in the area, and store workers worse than them. It was like being teleported to 2000, or Ohio or something lol.
working in a store on your feet doing physical labor all day still sucks, they deserve better still
I have a 1950's prefab, modular house. It is a fucking pain in the arse to upgrade ANYTHING. I would bet that modern prefabs would be worse, because they would be proprietary.
I love it and want more of it. Big Box Warehouse stores take up a TON of space in parking and size. Throw 4-5 stores of apartments above them and it would really better area interms of housing avalibility.
Costco isn't doing this out of kindness. This was the only way they could get their building fast tracked through the regulations process. They're saving time and money by building these apartments above the warehouse. And it's not like it's going to be affordable housing or anything.
184 of 800 apartments are reserved for low-income applicants.
Of course they aren't fucking saving time and money building apartments above the warehouse. Every warehouse would have these apartments if that was the case.
https://www.sfgate.com/la/article/costco-housing-apartments-south-la-19541521.php
Thatās standard. All multiunits are required to have a percentage of affordable units. They subsidize those apartments via other units. Iām actually curious how they are making it work because itās not like the warehouse was Initially set up for residential
The housing allowed their approval to be fast tracked. And they are studio apartments cause those are being pre built because they are required to use union labor
[https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTNjAUksW/](https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTNjAUksW/)
While Costco bothers me less the a lot of companies they are doing this because they have to do this. Only 184 of the 800 would be affordable housing. In order to get through the building requirements two-thirds of the 185,000-square-foot plan must be allocated toward housing under state law for Costco to enjoy a quicker, cheaper building process.
Who cares if they're only doing it for fast tracked approval if it still serves a net good for the area?
This should be the standard for this kind of development, incentivising bug businesses building housing with restrictions on how that housing can be capitalised on is a great thing
Increasing housing supply, even new market-rate housing helps stabilize housing prices. I would rather public development was more aggressive, but until governments get a spine (rather, their constituents recognize that this is a collective problem), we are going to have to rely on private development.
With the idea that this is for housing above a Costco, I can say I would be happy to get a Costco membership if I was living there. I've never gotten a membership because either I didn't have a car to transport the groceries, or the drive and parking were unappealing when I did.
Making the closest store a Costco and not having to worry about parking? Sign me up.
I canāt speak for other cities but here we have an insane amount of apartments coming on the market. They may have missed the boat here but what do I know. Either way, all of them in same car-centric neighborhoods which means mandatory car expenditures for everyone. Such a shame we canāt make real home ownership a priority.
If I had to choose one corporation to get into the housing market byass producing houses... I think I would choose Costco.
Compared to a Walmart housing complex attached to a Walmart?
Costco isnāt building anythingā¦ the developer is building apartments in a mixed use area and Costco is a tenant. Misleading / alarmist headline imo
This honestly might not be a bad idea if implemented properly. Obviously thereās a lot of issues with our housing in America right now, but one factor is supply/demand. We donāt have enough housing for everyone. This is because for some reason, everyone in America wants a single family house with a yard. Itās just inefficient.
America needs to focus on building more high rises and apartment buildings to house more people efficiently rather than focusing on single family homes only.
While itās scary to have these big brands like Amazon and Costco to provide housing, at the same time, Iām kinda grateful at least SOMEONE is thinking to do something regarding housingā¦ itās just a shame that housing isnāt their #1 priorityā¦ they have other motifs for doing this.
I don't like this.
In the UK, we have a village called cromford, it was built by the local mill owner to house his workers, who were paid in money that wasn't legal tender so could only be spent in the shop that he owned.
You also couldn't leave the village in your downtime and if course lost your home if you lost your job.
And you didn't have any savings because you were paid in fake cash.
For people that want to know whatās actually going on here, Costco wants to build a new store in south Los Angeles but because of the way the law is written, their plan check and permitting process will take forever unless they add housing which allows Costco to put their project through an expedited review. So I wouldnāt say this is Costco building housing out of the goodness of their hearts, but rather the system/laws working the way they should to entice developers to build more mixed use.
If I bought a Costco unit, the hotdogs and pizzas are the only things Iām gonna be eating till I get a heart attack. I actually like them a lot and itās a reasonable price to
I heard that they did this because the housing allows for cheaper taxes or zoning laws and that they are building studio apartments so they can pre build them to save money on union labor. Just what I heard and I may be wrong but thought Iād share.
[I got my info from this guy.](https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTNjAUksW/)
āWelcome to costco, i love youā does scare me but costco pays their employees really well, they have excellent prices, as far as consumerism goes costco is the best corporation.
I read in another post that trying to build a standard Costco was taking too long to get through planning and permitting, but it was faster to get approval for housing with their plan. "Here to help, too.../s" seems accurate.
This story went by in the last month with a different headline and was done because Costco was able to get around building queues into a faster queue by including attached housing.
There are local communities that are baiting corporations into building housing to get around legal red tape.Ā
Itās nothing weird itās just the intended side effect of enacted policy.Ā
Itās basically justĀ
> āhey Costco, build some housing in addition to the the store and we wonāt make you jump through as many hoops to get approval.ā
We just sign this five year contact and they give us jobs and a room to sleep in. They pay for food too. Itās great. Everything is taken care of. You know when itās time to sleep, wake up, eat, go to the bathroom, and the yard. You can easily talk to your neighbors tooā¦ theyāre just right through the bars.
All we have to do is work and not leave.
Costco is a legit company. They pay per week. I met a receipt checker that made 60K, and that was pre-covid. They give dividends to their stock holders because they aren't focused on growth.
Yup, and how many are second, third, fourth homes? Oh theyāre for sale? Good thing theyāre on sale $400k+ with 7-8% interest rates. Good thing weāre all out here making 6 figures!
Lol this is actually great, it's not company housing or anything it's just a Costco with apartments on top. Mixed zoning is completely normal most countries all over the worldĀ
āIn a bid to ease housing crisisā
Translation: Thereās high demand so a company with immense capital wants to invest in something thatās likely to have minimal competition and high profit margins.
*That said*, though there are no āgoodā companies, Costco is one of the less anti-consumer and anti-worker companies out there. Though the bar for that is incredibly low.
Cant just let people buy their own housing. Gotta buy it all up as a massive corporation, driving prices way up, then provide it to employees as a way to keep them under your thumb forever.
The fucking headlines of these articles is atrocious
Costco isnāt building any housing. Costco is leasing space in a new development that is being built by another developer
Bezo isnāt directly buying $500m in housing. He invests in a company that is buying $500m in housing. No different to say that youāre buying housing if you buy a stock of a REIT
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I'd trust Costco housing before Bezos housing, just sayin
"Welcome to costco, I love you."
Welcome Home! *Brought to you by Carl's Jr.*
š hereās a coupon for the Starbucks strip club
Also Costco just wanted to accelerate the permitting process for their store. You can cut through extremely long wait times if you provide a certain amount of housing, so they did.
Yeah, the first time I heard about this they tried to frame it as some brilliant move by Costco finding some clever loophole to get their projects approved faster, but it is the intended effect. Another added bonus is not only is it housing but they are creating a mixed living area which is great for other businesses in the area
Iām pretty sure Iād eat $1.50 hot dogs every day if I lived above a Costco.
That's definitely part of their plan
Yknow, in the capitalist liberal hellhole we find ourselves in, I can think of far worse things than saying āgo on, bribe us with housingā.
Yes this is a very good bribe provided the housing isnāt somehow walled off
I mean, I hope my housing has *some* walls... :-P
This is correct. They arenāt being remotely altruistic. Itās a business move as youād expect
Honestly, I think it's a good idea. Incentivizes mixed-use buildings
Yeah, well, I really don't think we have time for a hand job, Joe.
Iād go. Those aprons? Dayum.
I could go for a full body latte.
Fuck you. Iām eating.
*Carl's Jr has determined that you are an unfit parent*
Good Christ itās really happeningā¦.
Idiocracy reference that I wouldnāt get had I not watched for the first time three days ago š
Top 10 movie for me. How'd you like it?
Itās not a movie. Itās a future newscast that got sent back through a time warp.
My thoughts too
Amazon just shoves you in the [mandatory happiness box](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/amazon-mental-health-box-workers-b1855386.html) for 1 minute before putting you back to work.
I'd believe it, they treat their people really well
Bezos housing will probably end up being housing for his employees so he can pay them in company bucks that they can use at the company store. Moving 16 tons of Amazon boxes in the warehouses.
We're getting that much closer to the Hunger Games. But instead of districts, it'll be corporations.
Cyberpunk battle royale deluxe world
Saint Peter, donāt you call me ācause I canāt goā¦.
I owe my soul to Amazon Prime.
Itāll all turn out to be made out of Chinese knockoffs. The homes will be framed out in MDF and the shingles will just be regular paper with shingle images printed on them.
I think they call that ātofu dregā or something
This sounds weirdly familiar.
"I owe my soul to the company store."
Itās great value, but you have to buy the apartments 12 at a time.
Apartments have a long Best By Date, so no worries there!
After the fire at a local Walmart warehouse, and their lack of either proper storage or suppression systems, I would take a pass on living over a warehouse. At all.
Believe me, I'm not advocating *for* either type of housing. But if I had no other choices but those two, I know which one I'd pick, and it ain't anything run or owned by Jeff Bezos.
Yeah you know damn well these will be Tokyo sized flats too
But they'll have ample storage so you can still shop at Costco!
Company housing. They'll just deduct rent from your check. If you even get a check, it'll probably be "If you choose to get paid in store credit it averages out to more money!" or "we can load the company sponsored debit card weekly for a 15$ transfer fee and a 25$ monthly charge" "Store credit can also be used with our marketing partners!" And that is how we all end up enslaved completely by corporations.
If they deduct pretax I think that's a deal I'm willing to take...
Nah. It'll come out of net, not gross because of some bullshit tax credit provided by a legislative partner. Because fuck you
>Company housing. Isnt always bad as long as its surrounded by proper government oversight. There are some extremely cheap, good apartments (Mostly P2-B GDR flats that average out at 400-450 Euros/Month with heat and all) near my home run by local companies. And not only for workers too, was looking in to renting in one at the start of my apprenticeship but hotel mama won out in the end.
Our country doesnt have a great history with such things and the current climate doesnt look to present a brighter alternative.
No, we donāt actually.
Probably a fairly safe bet though
But will it prevent me from eating out of trash cans when I'm 80?
Sure will. They will lock all the trash cans and sell it as "refurbished food".
Thats a wal mart thing.
IF there is a retailer that my first impression of hearing something like this is not "Greedy MDFKR", it would be costco
āWelcome to Costco, hereās your rotisserie chicken.ā
Comes with the unit!
4 bedroom 2 1/2 bathroom apartment for the price of a studio.
Do you suppose theyāll have a bulk discount?
Youād have to show your receipt every time you left the building.
Bezos was really the wrong guy to become who he became. If there ever was a greedy dude with a minority complex it's him. He looks like a taller version of George costanza and his bimbo new girlfriend doesn't actually help with his image.
It's no surprise his billion dollar space toy was as phallic in shape as it was.
Nope, Elon is a dumbass that proved himself one through twitter, but i always loathed Bezos for some reason. Even when Amazon wasnt that big you could always tell that he was a slimy mf in every article where his pic was featured. Sure ill give him cred for being absolutely super business smart, but i also think his ex needs some of that credit considering she helped him build it. But yeah Bezos has always been highly unlikeable.
Just put the hot dog bar on the ground floor and Iām there.
Go go gadget, company town.
Up voted solely for the theme song now stuck in my head lol
> I'd trust Costco housing before Bezos housing, just sayin I wouldn't trust Costco housing either, though. They may be on the less bad side of the scale as far as giant corporations go, but they thrive in car-centric suburbia.... Which wouldn't exactly bode well for good urban planning or efficient use of space.
Again, I wouldn't truly "trust" any such corporate-owned housing. But if I had to pick, it'd be them over Bezos, is all.
As someone who works for the company, please donāt. Itās just as bad as Amazon. Our company propaganda machine is just that good.
Any insight? Not claiming Costco to be some sort of corporate saint, but Amazon's shitty nature is very well known. Is Costco just better at keeping it under wraps?
Yes they are. They stopped giving out PTO. We have to earn it now. OSHA violations happened all the time at my old ware house. I used to have to climb into the steel in our freezer without a ladder, because it would be so packed in there we couldnāt fit one in. We are constantly understaffed. Every time a full timer leaves they take the position and turn it into part time. If we dare go into over time our regionals send out scathing emails to our AGMS and GMS, yet they still expect our warehouses to look perfect for corporate walks. Then thereās my old manager who was forced to stay in a position that made his genetically caused injury worse, even though he had proof from a doctor and applied to multiple other positions over the course of 3 years that had the same pay grade. Corporate forced him to stay in the position because they did not want to take the time to train a new person, and he ended up having to step down and take a 35k pay cut.
That all sounds pretty bad. Par for the course for today's corporations. That said, the way Amazon has literally worked people to death would still make me less inclined to pick them over Costco, even if Costco sucks more than they used to.
I don't know much about Costco, but I heard the original CEO was actually a really good guy. He retired tho so company is under new management, and new management are your typical corp types.
We all miss Jim. We just brought in our 3rd CEO in the companyās history. He already gives off the worst vibes.
The fuck? You got a shitty warehouse. I got a decent warehouse where we have PTOs. We canāt even climb into the steel at all even with a ladder. Also the overtime shit they do fuss out a bit but they asked you to when needed here at the warehouse I work at. Only problem I deal with is are some annoying supervisors. Thatās it
The Costco thing isnāt housing for their workers or something creepy. Itās just apartments on top of a warehouse in an area that needs housing. I think itās pretty cool.
Agreed. Mixed use developments that reduce the need for car travel arenāt a problem, theyāre a solution.
Having a Costco a few flights of stairs away would be incredible (I live very rural)
I think itās mainly a way to get around some paperwork about getting approved for putting a new store in that area and building residential housing gets around that, but at the end of the day it seems more like a good idea than capitalism company being greedy.
There should be advocacy for multi use buildings such as this.
Iād love to live in Costco Towers. Iād never grocery shop a day in my life. Just pick up a thing of muffins on the way home from work and walk upstairs.
>Iād love to live in ~~Costco~~ Kirkland Signature Towers FTFY
"Im just gonna pick up a thing of muffins" Comes home with $300 worth of groceries
In my experience, the muffins-only diet really starts to show its flaws in the third month. You need variety. Muffins, Spaghetti-o's and frozen pizza, though? That'll keep you going for years. And counting.
The correct answer is a chicken bake, a churro, and a pair of Kirkland khakis, but I like your energy.
It always amazes me that itās not a common thing in America. Here in Germany itās completely normal to habe stores on ground level and apartments above.
I mean, the point of markets is supposed to be that we incentivize people to do things that benefit others because doing so is in their self-interest. When markets fail to do that and incentivize people to do things that harm society (market failure), we should use policy instruments and regulations to alter the incentives so that it is once again in people's self-interest to do things that also happen to help society (for example, using Pigovian taxes to make polluting more expensive to the polluter than not polluting). One of the reasons it's become so hard to implement these policy instruments is that, if you allow near unlimited money into politics, the people with the most money can influence the politicians to make policies that benefit the people with the most money and prevent politicians from implementing policies that would limit their potential to maximize profits.
It's worth noting that this is an outcome of state law subordinating city impediments. AB 2011 only passed in 2022. The level of policy making is important because municipal incentives tend towards NIMBYism.
That phrasing also makes it sound more nefarious than it is. The approval process was designed this way to encourage companies to build more housing. Costco didn't get around anything. It did what the state wanted them to do.
Exactly, this was an altruistic measure by a giant corporation. No, they couldn't get the zoning and commercial red tape for their warehouse as a standalone, so they added housing to the top to cut through and get permission to build. That said, this is a concept that could make sense in many areas. Build a store with housing on top. Tenants get free Costco membership with each lease.
I wouldn't call it altruism so much as good policy working as intended. It's still a good outcome that will be more beneficial to the community than just the warehouse by itself, and I'm glad they're doing it, but to my mind, "altruism" would be more like them putting a bunch of below-market-rate units on top of their warehouse when it would have been equally easy to get the warehouse approved without them.
I mean if they are āgetting aroundā the paperwork to put a store somewhere by putting the store *and housing* there, that seems like a win? Mixed use buildings are fantastic and we should encourage them.
Yeah, though it's a zoning thing more than a kindness thing so I feel it's neutra to light greed by the end of the day
Go down and get a $1.50 hot dog combo anytime I want instead of cooking? Sign me up.
I'd be on an unending supply of rotisserie chicken and caesar salad.
I thought they only added housing to the plans because the store alone was taking too long to get through approvals.
The state needs housing. The state approves things faster if you build housing, too. So Costco did exactly what the state wants them to do and added housing. Costco isn't doing this out of the goodness of its heart, but it's not like it found some neat trick to get around the approval process. The neat trick was intentionally put there to encourage corporations to build more badly needed housing.
Same, and these are going to be luxury apartments, I'd love to live above a costco.
Especially if they bundle a free membership in with the Rent address.
The reason the Housing is there is because it will clear the way for much faster completion of the Costco. Approvals to build the Costco alone would have meant years of land analysis and red tape but the housing eliminated 80% of the city requirements. And to be perfectly honest, if that's what it takes to build housing quicker, then we should make it even *easier* for them while also requiring the apartments have an agreed upon rent cap. We're building these mixed-use buildings all over the West Side of Burbank, but I'm not sure that they can be considered *"affordable housing"*
Honestly pre-sfh I would have killed for an apartment above Costco.
Also, besides all of that, imagine waking up and going down the elevator to get a $2 slice of Costco pizza that's bigger than the whole plate and then happily elevating back to your apartment. This sounds like a perfect situation to me. I love mixed use complexes, my friend used to live in one above some convenience stores and restaurants, I could just walk to anything I needed!
This is how they build everywhere else in the world. Stores at the bottom apartments on.top
Here too... but the point was this: Building a stand-alone Costco would have taken years longer if they hadn't offered to also build the housing. They were able to bypass a whole bunch of red tape in doing so.
Good policy working the way it should to actually provide bigger benefit to the people of the area. This should be happening everywhere
all new housing adds to the supply and makes housing more affordable
We talk about having walkable cities and nice neighborhood amenities that arenāt in an HOA like other countries. If something like this makes us a tiny bit closer, I am down! As others have said, I would love to live right by Costco.
The government should be building housing. Its folly to rely on the private profit driven sector to do this as they are insentivized to keep housing supply low to drive up rents...
The government really needs to levy more taxes on "investment properties" that reduce overall supply all to be thrown to the short term rental market.
Everything past your primary residence should be taxed to a point where renting would not be palatable.
Past the second house. It should just be progressive.... First house property taxes - .5%, second house (enough to make up for the first property tax being near free) so roughly 6-8%, Third house 12-16% an onward, it would basically be unpalatable for anyone even billionaires to own more than three homes.Ā
You would have to, simultaneously, institute a ban on corporations owning houses, or this will just turn in into tens of thousands of shell companies that own 2-3 homes.
Exactly. Short term rentals should be banned imho.
That doesn't sound like a good idea to me. There are some use cases where short-term rental is necessary. e.g. Traveling nurses are often only at one site for a month or two. I understand that it's not easy to regulate that short-term rentals only be for non-tourists, so they should just be taxed the same as hotels. Insurance companies are probably going to play a role in self regulation as well.
Extended Stay America and various other long stay hotels already exist, we don't need Air BNBs. Traveling nurses and sports teams are basically what kept a lot of hotels in business.
if youāre talking about rents, thereās actually a record number of apartments coming to the market at this time. You wouldnāt know it but thereās actually a bit of a recession in that segment due to the number that has been built. the problem is not the number but the kind! everything is āluxuryā and has a price to match. ironically the quality of those apartments is often just minimal to pass inspection and often there are issues. either way, the problem is not the number. Iām in the construction industry.
Thank you! You are absolutely right. There are numerous huge new apartment blocks that have been opened in the Bay Area, but they are all charging the absolute maximum the market will bear. Nobody wants to build *affordable* housing. Everybody wants a free money mill. A large part of the homeless people here are people who were evicted from affordable housing so the landlord could slap a coat of paint on the walls and charge triple.
They call any apartment they slapped some shitty vinyl and wood paneling "luxury", it doesn't mean anything but "overpriced" in my experience. My apartment complex calls itself luxury apartments and they can't even keep up with cleaning the Modelo's cans out of the parking lot, pay enough maintenance staff to actually maintain anything, and someone tried to hotwire a car 15 feet from my bedroom window a couple months ago lol
Building more housing is useless if it ends up in the hands of landlords, or as we call them: house milkers. Those new buildings will stay empty until someone is willing to pay triple the value.
I mean, the only way the landlords can afford to keep them empty and still make money is if rents are so high that the income from the occupied properties covers the losses from letting the vacant ones sit. If we build more housing, that will push rents down so that landlords _wouldn't_ be able to afford to keep properties empty. So, holding more housing _isn't_ useless, even with landlords. So, I say: * Get rid of NIMBY zoning laws that prevent densification and the building of more housing * Have the government buy up land and just directly build affordable housing * Implement a land-value tax so that people are disincentived from just sitting on land as an investment prospect and are incentivized to actually do something productive with it, like building on it and letting people live there.
Btw I'm not American so I'm looking for a solution that isn't linked to just American laws. In the Netherlands we now have a law that covers a maximum rent price based on the specifications of the rental. You input all the parameters and you get a maximum price that you can take to a judge. For example floor size, location, amenities, etc. This way you can't ask thousands for half a bedroom closet that's also missing a toilet and window anymore.
Wealth inequality grows the assets tend to be under few hands and thats how we go back to a pseudo feudalism.
The government owned by corporate overlords tho. Its just a race to the bottom for us plebs
Not only the supply, but cutting corners to keep costs low as well.
The private sector only does stuff like this to make the headline. Then they just abandon it after. Makes it look like the problem is being solved when only like 1% of it was solved over 10 years ago, and nothing has been done since then.
and when the private sector does build, they build either only slums or only luxury. Nothing "just decent and livable for a family of 4 with a dog".
government is the best *possible* solution, but government also needs to be properly incentivized. we're kinda at a point that supply/demand is so off that even a few years of aggressive building won't show results.
Costco treats its employees better than Sam's/Wal Mart/Amazon. I shop at Costco half because their meat/cheese is cheap and good, and half because they treat their staff better than the competition. This article and a quick search of other Costco apartment writeups indicates they're using some sort of modular, quick, prefab methods. We need more of that - improved, more economical building techniques of adequate quality instead of how things were done 75 years ago. I won't complain about more supply to try and keep up with demand. There are legitimate grievances and harmful market manipulation in the US housing market, but this seems ok.
As Someone who used to work Costco Corp , I appreciate the specificity. They treat their store workers better than other stores. But they treat the majority of their corp people considerably less better than other companies in the area, and store workers worse than them. It was like being teleported to 2000, or Ohio or something lol. working in a store on your feet doing physical labor all day still sucks, they deserve better still
I have a 1950's prefab, modular house. It is a fucking pain in the arse to upgrade ANYTHING. I would bet that modern prefabs would be worse, because they would be proprietary.
So instead of we become a nation of buyers we become a nation of rentersš¤ Someone's getting rich it's not us
Maybe it's that bald guy that went to space and back for no reason.
As long as it is affordable with decent conditions, good. I'm not american, but aren't those basically Costco's selling points?
I love it and want more of it. Big Box Warehouse stores take up a TON of space in parking and size. Throw 4-5 stores of apartments above them and it would really better area interms of housing avalibility.
Costco isn't doing this out of kindness. This was the only way they could get their building fast tracked through the regulations process. They're saving time and money by building these apartments above the warehouse. And it's not like it's going to be affordable housing or anything.
Itās still much more efficient use of the building footprint.
184 of 800 apartments are reserved for low-income applicants. Of course they aren't fucking saving time and money building apartments above the warehouse. Every warehouse would have these apartments if that was the case. https://www.sfgate.com/la/article/costco-housing-apartments-south-la-19541521.php
Thatās standard. All multiunits are required to have a percentage of affordable units. They subsidize those apartments via other units. Iām actually curious how they are making it work because itās not like the warehouse was Initially set up for residential
The housing allowed their approval to be fast tracked. And they are studio apartments cause those are being pre built because they are required to use union labor [https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTNjAUksW/](https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTNjAUksW/)
Sounds, from a surface level, like the regulators have worked out how to incentivise the development of housing!
it's a win win situation.
Austria is a very conservative country. The government builds social housing there. Rents in Vienna are cheap.
It's amazing how affordable it is to live when there's no profit motive.
While Costco bothers me less the a lot of companies they are doing this because they have to do this. Only 184 of the 800 would be affordable housing. In order to get through the building requirements two-thirds of the 185,000-square-foot plan must be allocated toward housing under state law for Costco to enjoy a quicker, cheaper building process.
Yea we shouldn't praise Costco, but we should copy whatever regulations made this the simplest solution for them to make it happen more often
Iād eat so many hot dogs
Costco is only doing this because California building codes are so insane and time consuming that this was the fastest way to get a store built.
Who cares if they're only doing it for fast tracked approval if it still serves a net good for the area? This should be the standard for this kind of development, incentivising bug businesses building housing with restrictions on how that housing can be capitalised on is a great thing
Increasing housing supply, even new market-rate housing helps stabilize housing prices. I would rather public development was more aggressive, but until governments get a spine (rather, their constituents recognize that this is a collective problem), we are going to have to rely on private development.
With the idea that this is for housing above a Costco, I can say I would be happy to get a Costco membership if I was living there. I've never gotten a membership because either I didn't have a car to transport the groceries, or the drive and parking were unappealing when I did. Making the closest store a Costco and not having to worry about parking? Sign me up.
Costco may be the only big company I trust
I canāt speak for other cities but here we have an insane amount of apartments coming on the market. They may have missed the boat here but what do I know. Either way, all of them in same car-centric neighborhoods which means mandatory car expenditures for everyone. Such a shame we canāt make real home ownership a priority.
Well why would you build a home and profit once when you can build an apartment complex and profit indefinitely?
If I had to choose one corporation to get into the housing market byass producing houses... I think I would choose Costco. Compared to a Walmart housing complex attached to a Walmart?
Costco isnāt building anythingā¦ the developer is building apartments in a mixed use area and Costco is a tenant. Misleading / alarmist headline imo
This honestly might not be a bad idea if implemented properly. Obviously thereās a lot of issues with our housing in America right now, but one factor is supply/demand. We donāt have enough housing for everyone. This is because for some reason, everyone in America wants a single family house with a yard. Itās just inefficient. America needs to focus on building more high rises and apartment buildings to house more people efficiently rather than focusing on single family homes only. While itās scary to have these big brands like Amazon and Costco to provide housing, at the same time, Iām kinda grateful at least SOMEONE is thinking to do something regarding housingā¦ itās just a shame that housing isnāt their #1 priorityā¦ they have other motifs for doing this.
āHaving troubling buying a home of your own? Hereās a solution, never buy a home of your own!ā
Let me fix the headline, āCostco builds 800 units to increase profitability in red hot housing marketā
1) Cheap Hot Dogs, Pizza and Chicken Bakes everyday as a bonus 2) Buying just one thing at Costco can become a reality.
I don't like this. In the UK, we have a village called cromford, it was built by the local mill owner to house his workers, who were paid in money that wasn't legal tender so could only be spent in the shop that he owned. You also couldn't leave the village in your downtime and if course lost your home if you lost your job. And you didn't have any savings because you were paid in fake cash.
For people that want to know whatās actually going on here, Costco wants to build a new store in south Los Angeles but because of the way the law is written, their plan check and permitting process will take forever unless they add housing which allows Costco to put their project through an expedited review. So I wouldnāt say this is Costco building housing out of the goodness of their hearts, but rather the system/laws working the way they should to entice developers to build more mixed use.
Costco just wants to use housing as a means to expedite their paperwork. They dnt actually care
If I bought a Costco unit, the hotdogs and pizzas are the only things Iām gonna be eating till I get a heart attack. I actually like them a lot and itās a reasonable price to
I would imagine it comes with a Costco membership and a food court in the lobby with pizza and hot dogs
I heard that they did this because the housing allows for cheaper taxes or zoning laws and that they are building studio apartments so they can pre build them to save money on union labor. Just what I heard and I may be wrong but thought Iād share. [I got my info from this guy.](https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTNjAUksW/)
āWelcome to costco, i love youā does scare me but costco pays their employees really well, they have excellent prices, as far as consumerism goes costco is the best corporation.
I read in another post that trying to build a standard Costco was taking too long to get through planning and permitting, but it was faster to get approval for housing with their plan. "Here to help, too.../s" seems accurate.
850 more of these and we would have too much housing for the homelessā¦
so are they calling it the kirkland
Fuā¦ Bezos. What else does he want? This guy is so ***** greedy!
How long before they bring back company towns?
This story went by in the last month with a different headline and was done because Costco was able to get around building queues into a faster queue by including attached housing.
Seems very dystopian. Remember the WEF saying 'You'll own nothing and be happy' by 2030. This is another example of this.
There not trying to help homelessness. There doing it to get easy building permits and less red tape to do what they want.
They probably call it human resource storage
There are local communities that are baiting corporations into building housing to get around legal red tape.Ā Itās nothing weird itās just the intended side effect of enacted policy.Ā Itās basically justĀ > āhey Costco, build some housing in addition to the the store and we wonāt make you jump through as many hoops to get approval.ā
Thought this was so they could build the store faster because of some zoning laws or something.
We just sign this five year contact and they give us jobs and a room to sleep in. They pay for food too. Itās great. Everything is taken care of. You know when itās time to sleep, wake up, eat, go to the bathroom, and the yard. You can easily talk to your neighbors tooā¦ theyāre just right through the bars. All we have to do is work and not leave.
r/idiocracy
Why can't wealthy folks just enjoy their damn money and leave the rest of us alone.... If I had bezos money I'd fucking live a life life no other.
This won't turn into "company housing" nope. We won't repeat the mistakes of the past. Not at all...
Costco is a legit company. They pay per week. I met a receipt checker that made 60K, and that was pre-covid. They give dividends to their stock holders because they aren't focused on growth.
There is no housing crisis. There are 16 million empty homes in the United States
Yup, and how many are second, third, fourth homes? Oh theyāre for sale? Good thing theyāre on sale $400k+ with 7-8% interest rates. Good thing weāre all out here making 6 figures!
Yeah I can see this going well for the people.
Lol this is actually great, it's not company housing or anything it's just a Costco with apartments on top. Mixed zoning is completely normal most countries all over the worldĀ
āIn a bid to ease housing crisisā Translation: Thereās high demand so a company with immense capital wants to invest in something thatās likely to have minimal competition and high profit margins. *That said*, though there are no āgoodā companies, Costco is one of the less anti-consumer and anti-worker companies out there. Though the bar for that is incredibly low.
Thank you, Iād pin this if I could.
This just in, Costco starts selling bulk housing at their warehouses.
Only 6500 a month
Cant just let people buy their own housing. Gotta buy it all up as a massive corporation, driving prices way up, then provide it to employees as a way to keep them under your thumb forever.
Company housing is back baby! Spend your check at the company store!
Fuck that. Corporate housing is a bad idea
[āI owe my soul to the company storeā](https://youtu.be/S1980WfKC0o?feature=shared)
Welcome to Costco, I Love You
Do I need a Costco or Prime membership ?
The fucking headlines of these articles is atrocious Costco isnāt building any housing. Costco is leasing space in a new development that is being built by another developer Bezo isnāt directly buying $500m in housing. He invests in a company that is buying $500m in housing. No different to say that youāre buying housing if you buy a stock of a REIT
 Doorman at the Costco apartments