[Noisebridge-discuss] Frantisek is going to stop living at Noisebridge starting tonight.

[Dr. Jesus]

On Tue, Nov 16, 2010 at 8:35 AM, Albert Sweigart <asweigart at gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm not pissed, he just has to stop sleeping at Noisebridge. Okay, I'm
> a little pissed. Having someone live in the space is against our lease
> and will get Noisebridge in trouble with our landlord. Having people
> live rent free in the space isn't fair to everyone else. We never say,
> "your donation/dues helps someone avoid living at a place where they'd
> have to pay rent" to people who walk in the door and want to work on
> projects.

I want to clear up a few facts here to help enlighten the brewing
discussion a bit:

First of all, it's not against our lease as far as I can tell.  It is
a planning code violation.  Every time I've talked to city planning,
including today, they've been real clear that 2169's current status is
that there shall be no residential uses, period.

Second, it's a legal gray area as to whether taking a nap while
waiting for the next BART train is "residential use" or not.  There's
some precedent for it: I know other people in our zoning category and
neighborhood commercial district who do it occasionally.  Staying
overnight might be ok, extended periods are definitely not ok, but
there aren't any serious consequences if the planning department
doesn't know it's happening.  You can look at the zoning page on the
wiki for links to more detail.

Third, a Department of Building Inspection person shows up once a
month to check on the elevators, and the easiest way I can think of to
get into the elevator room involves going through our space.  I have
no idea whether they're going to report someone passed out on a couch
in front of the member shelves.  My intuition says they're probably
going to ignore it, but on the other hand the city is kind of broke.

Fourth, I talked to three of the people involved with the last spat.
I found out that a main reason why they are occasionally at
Noisebridge overnight is that although they have housing, it's usually
small and they prefer the Noisebridge social environment to being
alone.  Passing out sometimes seems to be a common side effect of
this, and for some of them it develops into a sheepishly admitted
habit.  I've seen all three people pushing brooms at least once.  I've
also seen at least one of them have a friend show up high on acid and
pass out on one of the couches.

Lastly, a common compliant seems to be the cost of transportation
elsewhere, and the difficulty of getting affordable housing in San
Francisco.  I added a starving hacker resources page on the wiki to
aggregate the suggestions I'm sure will come up in the ensuing thread:

  https://www.noisebridge.net/wiki/Starving_hackers

Please contribute to it for future generations who won't see this thread.