“Towards the rotating knives”
By 
Ah fuck. Adam Neumann is back. How long do you think it will take the creator and almost destroyer of WeWork to blow through the $350 million some other rich dickholes gave him to fuck over renters?
Flow, a residential real estate company … Andreessen positioned the new company as a long-awaited solution to the nation’s “housing crisis.” He used a mix of jargon-filled terms — “community-driven, experience-centric service” — to explain how the new startup would “create a system where renters receive the benefits of owners.”
Because this planet needs more slumlords, right? And why the hell is it called Flow? I’m of the age the it sounds like a euphemism for having a period. Maybe the renters will bleed money.
“We think it is natural that for his first venture since WeWork, Adam returns to the theme of connecting people through transforming their physical spaces and building communities where people spend the most time: their homes,” Andreessen wrote. “Residential real estate — the world’s largest asset class — is ready for exactly this change.”
For those of you who don’t speak Corpowank, he’s talking about co-living, which the Disruptorcon term for plain old rooming houses.
Flow wants to be a housing utopia for remote workers. Andreessen mentioned workers moving away from the in-person office experience, with Flow offering a community-style living to accommodate the future workforce. It is unclear whether Flow will offer a rent-to-own option for residents.
Make that, a rooming house where the other residents are always there because you all work from home. (I’d love to see the clauses in the lease that cover the WFH requirement). But by not calling it a rooming house Neumann signals that he is bringing bullshit to the table and bullshit + housing is something we have more than enough of, thank you very much.
Neumann tried residential real estate before and failed. Under his leadership, the We brand launched WeLive, co-living spaces in New York and Virginia. The plans to expand to India and Israel quickly shuttered, and in 2019, WeLive became the subject of an investigation by New York City.
Of course. He did.
But according to the vulture capitalists who gave him money, that doesn’t matter.
For all the energy put into covering the story, it’s often under appreciated that only one person has fundamentally redesigned the office experience and led a paradigm-changing global company in the process: Adam Neumann.
He fucked it up, but he did it disruptively. And stuff.
Critics quickly point out that Andreessen’s concern over the housing crisis comes off as disingenuous since it was recently revealed that the investor opposed a proposal for new housing units in his posh neighborhood.
Of course. He did.
Anyway, if you live in any of the cities listed below you might want to start attending local planning/zoning meetings.
Neumann purchased more than 3,000 apartment units in Atlanta, Fort Lauderdale, Miami, and Nashville, according to the Times, and will offer Flow’s branded rental-housing experience and services to outside developers.
Otherwise you, your neighbors or both could wind up without a home and see your city graced by empty apartment buildings that were half-way to being refitted from individual units to co-living spaces when the money ran out.
