Do you realise that the figure cited (3-4k a year) isn’t rent cost? It’s total living cost. At least in my case that’s 4 times as little as what I’m running on, and I’m pretty cheap. For others the difference might be much larger.
Yes, I do. But in times when talent is the bigger constraint than funding, I’d rather create $100k worth of impact at a financial cost of $25k than $50k at a cost of $4k. Often, interacting in-person with specific people in specific places (often in major hubs) will enable you to increase your impact substantially. This isn’t true for everyone, and not always, but it will often be the case, even for coding/research projects. E.g. it’s commonly accepted wisdom that for-profit (coding) startups can increase their value substantially by moving to the Bay, and individual programmers can increase their salaries by more than the higher living cost by moving there. Similar things might apply to EA projects in Oxford / London / Berkeley / San Francisco.
So the potential benefits of the EA hotel might be somewhat limited, and there might also be some costs / harms (as I mentioned in the other comments).
Yes, I do. But in times when talent is the bigger constraint than funding, I’d rather create $100k worth of impact at a financial cost of $25k than $50k at a cost of $4k. Often, interacting in-person with specific people in specific places (often in major hubs) will enable you to increase your impact substantially. This isn’t true for everyone, and not always, but it will often be the case, even for coding/research projects. E.g. it’s commonly accepted wisdom that for-profit (coding) startups can increase their value substantially by moving to the Bay, and individual programmers can increase their salaries by more than the higher living cost by moving there. Similar things might apply to EA projects in Oxford / London / Berkeley / San Francisco.
So the potential benefits of the EA hotel might be somewhat limited, and there might also be some costs / harms (as I mentioned in the other comments).