12 ms·

'Co-living': the end of urban loneliness or cynical corporate dormitories?

135 points by laurex 7y ago

0xDEFC0DE 7y ago
>“The Collective gave me that flexibility, but what kept me there – and I’ve extended my original contract – is the community and all the other things that come with it.” Bit of a creepy sounding sentence with that name
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
wpietri 7y ago
> co-living is billed as a solution to the housing crisis – but others say it’s simply an attempt to cash in on it I mean, why not both? I think the problem is real, and I think modern housing approaches are driven by patterns and drives that are woefully outdated. I think there must be more humane, more collaborative ways to live. On the other hand, I can name a lot of companies that market to real problems but clearly care much more about massive revenue than making any real difference.
- asdafdssad 7y ago
  Because there really isn't a housing crisis so much as a market failure to provide architecturally suitable spaces. Consider that cities in N. America either have homes with large lots or condos with maximum 2 bedrooms (the price for 3 bedrooms or more scale non-linearly). Therefore it is very difficult to have a family of 4+ in an apartment. The homes with large lots create areas with too low density which cause our transportation woes (long commutes, highways, infeasibility of public transport). The 2 bedroom condo building are also often high-rises, which are also terrible (density is too high, making transportation near the building very difficult - just see the jams caused by people getting out of the high rise in the morning). A more sensible, IMHO, is to have apartment blocks no taller than 8 stories with a good mix of 1, 2, and three bedroom units. These are found in poorer developed countries where the middle class could not necessarily afford a car, never mind two (my family in BsAs, for example in a 100 m^2, three bedroom apt)
  - dantheman 7y ago
    Bad government regulation isn't a market failure.
    - asdafdssad 7y ago
      SF isn't the whole world. Yes, there is gov't insanity in housing in the US, but bad housing decisions are made across the US' various states and city governments. Canada, with a much more sensible gov't [0], has similar woes driven by building idiotic high rises. [0] Govt spending as a fraction of GDP is similar; the suburbs are much higher density than the US; the line at the DMV takes less then 15 minutes; a new passport takes 2 hours to get from when it was requested (clearly I've lived in very many places).
  - opportune 7y ago
    Yes, I have read that the reason Soviet housing blocks were generally 6-9 stories was that the planners found it to optimize density. The other main benefit of Soviet style housing was that there were large green areas between buildings, which we don’t have in a lot of American cities with similarly sized apartment buildings - here they will more commonly have a very small courtyard, bigger parking area, and otherwise go right up to the road.
    - madengr 7y ago
      They are called housing projects in the USA.
      - asdafdssad 7y ago
        Kinda. They weren't nearly as well thought out as the Soviet apt. were, and the underlying city planning was incompatible with the design. After all, if you're transforming your cities into a sea of asphalt and destroying the public transportation systems, how convenient is a housing project with thousands of units and no parking?
    - fyfy18 7y ago
slovenlyrobot 7y ago
I had the displeasure of touring the building from the article, and can say categorically that place is a modern day shithole, replete with random inner doors in the property padlocked shut from the "residents". It's basically an office block with as many _tiny_ rooms packed together as humanely possible, with shitty aircon and absolutely no sound insulation between whoever your existential pigeonhole happens to be paired with. The experience left me more concerned for the mental health of the people packed into those spaces than anything else
- saagarjha 7y ago
  Sounds a bit like your average college residence hall.
  - bilbo0s 7y ago
    This. Really, this is what a lot of these co-living places are, they just don't want to use that four letter word: "Dorm".
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
  - vkou 7y ago
    Sounds like Stalinist-era barracks to me. I am amused, but not surprised to see us rediscover all the 'greatest' ideas of the USSR. I'm assuming that the next one will be 'papers, please, comrade'...
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - mcguire 7y ago
      Choose your enemies wisely. You become them.
  - dcolkitt 7y ago
fromthestart 7y ago
>Decent joinery and inbuilt storage spares residents having to buy flat pack furniture, while the living spaces, which all flow into an outdoor area, are designed to encourage communal dining and social interaction All of these spaces seem to have in common that they're absolutely hostile to introverts who need at least some privacy and quiet. They also follow a consistent pattern of cramming as many people into a tiny space as possible to milk properties while billing themselves as driving some kind of positive housing revolution. This is just open concept for housing and the CEO who talks about doing this out of some implied generosity is a comical stereotype of the sociopathic but charismatic SV executive. If you want to build a community, you need to foster a common, meaningful goal for people to come together over, and it needs to be organic. It also helps if the people have a common culture/heritage. You can't commercialize community as a product to transient weekly renters from random places for any meaningful amount of time, it just comes off as forced and artificial, like corporate propaganda.
- bilbo0s 7y ago
  I agree with you about the CEO and business model. That said, I mean: >All of these spaces seem to have in common that they're absolutely hostile to introverts who need at least some privacy and quiet. That's kind of a strange complaint, because why would such a person seek out a co-living arrangement? Wouldn't renting a studio or efficiency apartment be more consistent with his/her personality and desires as far as living arrangement? (And cheaper than a trendy co-living place to boot?)
  - fromthestart 7y ago
    >Wouldn't renting a studio or efficiency apartment be more consistent with his/her personality and desires Sure, but in the article these spaces are billed by their marketing as solutions to the affordable housing crisis, but it seems like they're potentially missing out on a market share and possibly creating living spaces which are even uncomfortably open for extroverts, by being designed as excessively open, in the same way that open concept over optimizes for design constraint enabling collaboration to the overall detriment of comfort and productiveness.
macawfish 7y ago
Huh? People have been "co-living" in urban areas forever, even though in some areas it is technically illegal. It's technically illegal in the city I live in but everyone does it. This just sounds like a corporate, rent extracting appropriation of "co-living". Honestly I'm sick and tired of the normalization of rent seeking. It's draining our collective creative energy. If you want a glimpse into the original organized "co-living" movement, see here: https://coophousing.org/ https://coophousing.org/
- xvedejas 7y ago
  I'm a big fan of the co-living movement, and that's why it's exciting to see it mainstreamed by corporations. I hope they're successful and we see more options for people to live with one another. I live in a group house and don't mind seeing this lifestyle normalized. I certainly lose nothing when more options are available to others.
  - macawfish 7y ago
    I hear you, and I'm all for alternative options for living. But I'm frustrated that for profit corporations have such a stranglehold on capital, and are therefore in a position to dictate the physical and social infrastructure of these spaces. The corporate domination of capital is essentially takeover of local governance.
    - xvedejas 7y ago
      I think the solution is a land value tax. This would take the value out of excluding others from land. There are known solutions to this known problem, it's the political class to blame.
- klenwell 7y ago
  > Honestly I'm sick and tired of the normalization of rent seeking. It's draining our collective creative energy. I feel like this is the prototype of Roko's basilisk.[0] I mean the rent-seeking part isn't new. That's been around since the beginning of time. Rent-seekers are going to rent-seek. But the application of the latest modern technology to optimize it. This whole gig economy. That's new and feels like it's getting out of control. [0] https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Roko's_basilisk https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Roko's_basilisk
esotericn 7y ago
The solution to the "housing crisis" is to establish a sensible legal framework that allows dense housing to: - be owned by the individuals that live there if they choose to do so (renting should be a choice; owning should have similar accessibility) - have a sensible framework for both renting and ownership that empowers the individuals actually living there e.g. no onerous lease crap or leasehold shenanigans - actually be built e.g. kill off silly zoning This sounds like none of those. In most countries established interests block it. Hacking around it by just deciding that the way previous generations lived a happy life is inaccessible now and everyone should just live in Uber Flats is not the answer, sorry.
- fyfy18 7y ago
  If as a renter you are free to do what you want in an apartment (on par with ownership, so if you end up damaging another apartment or the common areas you are responsible), and can't be kicked out because the landlord decides they want more money, I'm not sure if you would ever want to own a property. Excluding "investment opportunities" of course.
  - ohazi 7y ago
    I have never seen a rental property where this was the standard. What you've actually just described is one of the best reasons to buy: As long as you pay your mortgage and property taxes and don't have an HOA, basically nobody is going to bother you.
  - esotericn 7y ago
    Sure. Is this a bad thing? That's how most social housing in the UK worked until a decade or two ago. The home I grew up in was rented by my parents for over 20 years, they basically treated it as if they owned it. We bought it recently because this may change at some point in the future. Practically other than the rent not existing nothing changes. The model of a home as being this ephemeral thing that you just sort of occupy for a bit and then move on to the next town isn't one that most people actually want. It's prevalent on Hacker News because there are a ton of people here with no family, no plans to form a family, and for whom moving around often for work is normal. Which is fine, but it's not representative of the general population.
ourlordcaffeine 7y ago
> The next day I got an email saying they’d seen me on CCTV with a glass in the smoking area and if I did it again there would be consequences Nice. A totalitarian 'utopia', where your every move is watched on cctv for possible infractions. I wonder what else they will punish residents for. Bringing dates back home? Having a skirt that's too short?
- chronic839 7y ago
  > I wonder what else they will punish residents for. Bringing dates back home? Having a skirt that's too short? If those are against the community rules, absolutely, they should be punished. Don't like the rules? Vote to change them or move somewhere else. You can't do this in China anyway, do treasure the opportunity.
  - anarchy8 7y ago
    What an authoritarian mindset.
  - dsfyu404ed 7y ago
    Rules follow norms. Rules will not change to accommodate new behavior until that behavior is already accepted. With authoritarian enforcement you can never get to this stage.
colechristensen 7y ago
I might consider living in an apartment building that traded some private space for shared common space, but the architecture of such would need to be actually usable, not the same "amenities" which are ever present in luxury apartments and mostly unused, impersonal affairs. I think the key there would be replacing the hallway of doors with shared kitchen and lounge spaces or something along those lines. I'm not interested in living in a cubbyhole inside a co-working space.
- esotericn 7y ago
  Right. Almost all of these places look super depressing, like something out of American Psycho. I'd expect the common room to look like a makerspace, or Grandma's house, or an artist's studio, or a game room, or maybe each corner of it is different, whatever.
simplecomplex 7y ago
I’m sick of the political opinion pieces disguised as news that amount to nothing more than “capitalism bad corporations evil” now dominating HN. Mostly NYT and Gaurdian articles. We can’t just have an article about co-living... Ugh.
aidenn0 7y ago
Prior to the baby-boom, this was a very common form of urban living, right? Yet somehow everyone has to pretend it's new: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boarding_house https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boarding_house
bitwize 7y ago
Here's how to do it on the cheap in Boston metro: Go to Craigslist, go to apartments for rent by owner, and look for a room that matches your balance of affordability, location, size, and amenities. Meet with the landlord to see it beforehand, be sure to discuss things like leaks, mold, and pests, and if you think you have a winner, move in. You will probably be sharing an apartment with three or four or five other people, but hey, that's Massachusetts. (The Ylvis song "Massachusetts" even makes reference to this.) You won't have to pay a finder's fee to some agency, you will be dealing directly with your landlord, and you won't find yourself in a situation that looks like it'll rapidly degenerate into a Focus Features dystopian art film. (Seriously? "The Collective"? You want to convince people you're not shit-tier offbrand Orwell with a name like that?)
- paggle 7y ago
  That’s a solution to housing, not urban loneliness.
  - bitwize 7y ago
    You'll be all up on the lives of at least three other people -- some of whom figure as long as we live together, why not go out for pizza every now and then. At this point, whether you're sharing a by-owner apartment or shacking up with The Collective, your loneliness is largely a function of how aggressively you choose to sequester yourself from the people in your immediate environment. That is, until The Collective starts requiring neural implants as a condition of residency...
    - paggle 7y ago
      I can say that in my college dorm, one of the essential things was that the people near me were not random. They were my same age in the same college and in the 700 people who lived there a lot shared my interests. That’s what these facilities are trying to recreate, not just having a Homo sapiens within ten feet.
madengr 7y ago
The “Collective” in a big block building? I assume this is a pun at the Borg, but maybe not.
- chrisseaton 7y ago
  No this is the original meaning of collective as a noun.
tempsy 7y ago
Just give me a small space in the center of a major city for under $500k.
chrisseaton 7y ago
Has anyone here ever lived in a military mess? We’ve been doing it for hundreds of years and it can be a fantastic living experience, with communal meals and property, and opportunities to socialise, but your own space when you need it. I don't know why young professional civilians don't replicate it more often.
- raverbashing 7y ago
  Because in the military you have a lot of adults in the room running things and those who don't play by the rules get rightened real quickly
lazyguy2 7y ago
My vote is for "cynical corporate dormitories" Since it's such 1984-speak. Years ago they called these things tenement buildings. Although the word can mean any multi-home building, it usually is used (at least in the USA) as a reference to high capacity, low footprint, urban living arrangements. So, yeah. It's a nice way to solve housing crisis for relatively low income living, but don't act like it's some sort of innovation that people are going to find super desirable. Because most people won't. Some people do, but most people kinda want their own house.
- i_am_nomad 7y ago
  I’m with you on this. It’s yet another happy re-branding of unpleasant, rent-seeking, worker-hostile things. Behold: Tenement buildings -> Co-living Serfdom -> Gig economy Mass propaganda -> Targeted content
moosey 7y ago
I've been thinking about extreme co-living, with people who have a shared set of values living together and sharing not just the living space, but also wealth, to such an extent that it's basically a new-age monasticism. Regardless, the idea is crazy and out there, and probably possible with a limited subset of college professors or something like that, but still, it has its basis in shared values. Working at the same company is not a shared set of values, at least not the way that companies are structured today and how workers are seen by those companies. As such, I don't think that these living spaces can build the tribal and communal opportunities that make a shared living space workable, and make people willing to improve that shared space. As corporations become larger, and with consideration to the fact that they might start to consider these kinds of shared values and try to build based on those, it might be possible, but it's probably also illegal for a corporation to do such a thing.
- closetohome 7y ago
  I think you nailed it with the common interests thing. People have compared this to both college dorm living and military boarding -- but in both of those cases you're surrounded by people your age with a ton of common interests, experiences, and values. Creating a community from a mixed bag of corporate workers is possible, but it would take a lot more work.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
ta1234567890 7y ago
Idea: create clean public restrooms and showers for everyone. Place them every few blocks so they are conveniently accessible everywhere. Have well paid cleaning staff that keeps the places in good shape at all times. Have well paid security staff, train them to be empathetic and help users out, also connect them with other organizations that could provide additional help that some users might need. And have free lockers where people can keep their clothes. That might at least allow homeless people to be/feel clean, be treated with more respect/dignity and have a connection to a network of resources that could help them out. In SF it might also get rid of the shit on the sidewalks, the smell of pee everywhere (especially around bars/nightclubs) and allow for easier tourism (it's kind of a pain finding a restroom some times when traveling). Why not invest in the poor/less fortunate and give them as much as we can give them? All of society would be better off if instead of blaming these people for their situation, we helped them have a better one. PS: Amsterdam has a slightly similar concept with their public urinals. They are kind gross, but they definitely help with keeping people from peeing all over the place. And pretty much everywhere in Japan there are clean public toilets (no showers or lockers though), it's really amazing.
- tenebrisalietum 7y ago
  > Why not invest in the poor/less fortunate and give them as much as we can give them? It's hard to tell "less fortunate but a kind person that will be independent if given the chance" from "doesn't give a fuck and will take advantage of anything free/helpful in a destructive manner without any respect to others including those equally less fortunate or generous to him/her" Society definitely creates the second type of people but I can't fault anyone for not wanting to put themselves in a position of vulnerability for the greater good of someone who won't appreciate it.
  - ta1234567890 7y ago
    You are totally right that it's a hard sell. At the same time, why "punish" everyone for the actions of a few? Also, if everyone has access to a certain benefit, it's really hard to take advantage of it in a negative way. For example you can't resell it. I feel like toilets/showers should be something like roads, ubiquitous, accessible to everyone and continuously maintained. I haven't seen people complaining about trucks/busses using the roads too much/more than them, while making money.
jccalhoun 7y ago
The only thing I miss from living in a dorm is not having to cook, do dishes, or buy groceries. I know i could just go out to eat every meal but it seems more expensive when mom and dad aren't paying for it (or I'm not paying for it with loans that I'm still paying off...)
hexo 7y ago
Co-living is total nightmare and the absolute end of human dignity since it reminds me having flatmates (I have plenty of experience with that) but in a way worse style
buboard 7y ago
Sounds like Co-Suffering
sys_64738 7y ago
This is a glorified share house which is okay for short term ness when you know it’s end date. Being stuck there indefinitely totally sucks. People want their privacy and they want more of it as they get older. There’s a reason the richer you are the more you try to distance yourself from others by more privacy mechanisms.

135 points by laurex 7y ago

>“The Collective gave me that flexibility, but what kept me there – and I’ve extended my original contract – is the community and all the other things that come with it.” Bit of a creepy sounding sentence with that name

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

wpietri 7y ago

> co-living is billed as a solution to the housing crisis – but others say it’s simply an attempt to cash in on it I mean, why not both? I think the problem is real, and I think modern housing approaches are driven by patterns and drives that are woefully outdated. I think there must be more humane, more collaborative ways to live. On the other hand, I can name a lot of companies that market to real problems but clearly care much more about massive revenue than making any real difference.

asdafdssad 7y ago
Because there really isn't a housing crisis so much as a market failure to provide architecturally suitable spaces. Consider that cities in N. America either have homes with large lots or condos with maximum 2 bedrooms (the price for 3 bedrooms or more scale non-linearly). Therefore it is very difficult to have a family of 4+ in an apartment. The homes with large lots create areas with too low density which cause our transportation woes (long commutes, highways, infeasibility of public transport). The 2 bedroom condo building are also often high-rises, which are also terrible (density is too high, making transportation near the building very difficult - just see the jams caused by people getting out of the high rise in the morning). A more sensible, IMHO, is to have apartment blocks no taller than 8 stories with a good mix of 1, 2, and three bedroom units. These are found in poorer developed countries where the middle class could not necessarily afford a car, never mind two (my family in BsAs, for example in a 100 m^2, three bedroom apt)
- dantheman 7y ago
  Bad government regulation isn't a market failure.
  - asdafdssad 7y ago
    SF isn't the whole world. Yes, there is gov't insanity in housing in the US, but bad housing decisions are made across the US' various states and city governments. Canada, with a much more sensible gov't [0], has similar woes driven by building idiotic high rises. [0] Govt spending as a fraction of GDP is similar; the suburbs are much higher density than the US; the line at the DMV takes less then 15 minutes; a new passport takes 2 hours to get from when it was requested (clearly I've lived in very many places).
- opportune 7y ago
  Yes, I have read that the reason Soviet housing blocks were generally 6-9 stories was that the planners found it to optimize density. The other main benefit of Soviet style housing was that there were large green areas between buildings, which we don’t have in a lot of American cities with similarly sized apartment buildings - here they will more commonly have a very small courtyard, bigger parking area, and otherwise go right up to the road.
  - madengr 7y ago
    They are called housing projects in the USA.
    - asdafdssad 7y ago
      Kinda. They weren't nearly as well thought out as the Soviet apt. were, and the underlying city planning was incompatible with the design. After all, if you're transforming your cities into a sea of asphalt and destroying the public transportation systems, how convenient is a housing project with thousands of units and no parking?
  - fyfy18 7y ago

slovenlyrobot 7y ago

I had the displeasure of touring the building from the article, and can say categorically that place is a modern day shithole, replete with random inner doors in the property padlocked shut from the "residents". It's basically an office block with as many _tiny_ rooms packed together as humanely possible, with shitty aircon and absolutely no sound insulation between whoever your existential pigeonhole happens to be paired with. The experience left me more concerned for the mental health of the people packed into those spaces than anything else

saagarjha 7y ago
Sounds a bit like your average college residence hall.
- bilbo0s 7y ago
  This. Really, this is what a lot of these co-living places are, they just don't want to use that four letter word: "Dorm".
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- vkou 7y ago
  Sounds like Stalinist-era barracks to me. I am amused, but not surprised to see us rediscover all the 'greatest' ideas of the USSR. I'm assuming that the next one will be 'papers, please, comrade'...
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - mcguire 7y ago
    Choose your enemies wisely. You become them.
- dcolkitt 7y ago

fromthestart 7y ago

>Decent joinery and inbuilt storage spares residents having to buy flat pack furniture, while the living spaces, which all flow into an outdoor area, are designed to encourage communal dining and social interaction All of these spaces seem to have in common that they're absolutely hostile to introverts who need at least some privacy and quiet. They also follow a consistent pattern of cramming as many people into a tiny space as possible to milk properties while billing themselves as driving some kind of positive housing revolution. This is just open concept for housing and the CEO who talks about doing this out of some implied generosity is a comical stereotype of the sociopathic but charismatic SV executive. If you want to build a community, you need to foster a common, meaningful goal for people to come together over, and it needs to be organic. It also helps if the people have a common culture/heritage. You can't commercialize community as a product to transient weekly renters from random places for any meaningful amount of time, it just comes off as forced and artificial, like corporate propaganda.

bilbo0s 7y ago
I agree with you about the CEO and business model. That said, I mean: >All of these spaces seem to have in common that they're absolutely hostile to introverts who need at least some privacy and quiet. That's kind of a strange complaint, because why would such a person seek out a co-living arrangement? Wouldn't renting a studio or efficiency apartment be more consistent with his/her personality and desires as far as living arrangement? (And cheaper than a trendy co-living place to boot?)
- fromthestart 7y ago
  >Wouldn't renting a studio or efficiency apartment be more consistent with his/her personality and desires Sure, but in the article these spaces are billed by their marketing as solutions to the affordable housing crisis, but it seems like they're potentially missing out on a market share and possibly creating living spaces which are even uncomfortably open for extroverts, by being designed as excessively open, in the same way that open concept over optimizes for design constraint enabling collaboration to the overall detriment of comfort and productiveness.

macawfish 7y ago

Huh? People have been "co-living" in urban areas forever, even though in some areas it is technically illegal. It's technically illegal in the city I live in but everyone does it. This just sounds like a corporate, rent extracting appropriation of "co-living". Honestly I'm sick and tired of the normalization of rent seeking. It's draining our collective creative energy. If you want a glimpse into the original organized "co-living" movement, see here: https://coophousing.org/ https://coophousing.org/

xvedejas 7y ago
I'm a big fan of the co-living movement, and that's why it's exciting to see it mainstreamed by corporations. I hope they're successful and we see more options for people to live with one another. I live in a group house and don't mind seeing this lifestyle normalized. I certainly lose nothing when more options are available to others.
- macawfish 7y ago
  I hear you, and I'm all for alternative options for living. But I'm frustrated that for profit corporations have such a stranglehold on capital, and are therefore in a position to dictate the physical and social infrastructure of these spaces. The corporate domination of capital is essentially takeover of local governance.
  - xvedejas 7y ago
    I think the solution is a land value tax. This would take the value out of excluding others from land. There are known solutions to this known problem, it's the political class to blame.
klenwell 7y ago
> Honestly I'm sick and tired of the normalization of rent seeking. It's draining our collective creative energy. I feel like this is the prototype of Roko's basilisk.[0] I mean the rent-seeking part isn't new. That's been around since the beginning of time. Rent-seekers are going to rent-seek. But the application of the latest modern technology to optimize it. This whole gig economy. That's new and feels like it's getting out of control. [0] https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Roko's_basilisk https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Roko's_basilisk

esotericn 7y ago

The solution to the "housing crisis" is to establish a sensible legal framework that allows dense housing to: - be owned by the individuals that live there if they choose to do so (renting should be a choice; owning should have similar accessibility) - have a sensible framework for both renting and ownership that empowers the individuals actually living there e.g. no onerous lease crap or leasehold shenanigans - actually be built e.g. kill off silly zoning This sounds like none of those. In most countries established interests block it. Hacking around it by just deciding that the way previous generations lived a happy life is inaccessible now and everyone should just live in Uber Flats is not the answer, sorry.

fyfy18 7y ago
If as a renter you are free to do what you want in an apartment (on par with ownership, so if you end up damaging another apartment or the common areas you are responsible), and can't be kicked out because the landlord decides they want more money, I'm not sure if you would ever want to own a property. Excluding "investment opportunities" of course.
- ohazi 7y ago
  I have never seen a rental property where this was the standard. What you've actually just described is one of the best reasons to buy: As long as you pay your mortgage and property taxes and don't have an HOA, basically nobody is going to bother you.
- esotericn 7y ago
  Sure. Is this a bad thing? That's how most social housing in the UK worked until a decade or two ago. The home I grew up in was rented by my parents for over 20 years, they basically treated it as if they owned it. We bought it recently because this may change at some point in the future. Practically other than the rent not existing nothing changes. The model of a home as being this ephemeral thing that you just sort of occupy for a bit and then move on to the next town isn't one that most people actually want. It's prevalent on Hacker News because there are a ton of people here with no family, no plans to form a family, and for whom moving around often for work is normal. Which is fine, but it's not representative of the general population.

ourlordcaffeine 7y ago

> The next day I got an email saying they’d seen me on CCTV with a glass in the smoking area and if I did it again there would be consequences Nice. A totalitarian 'utopia', where your every move is watched on cctv for possible infractions. I wonder what else they will punish residents for. Bringing dates back home? Having a skirt that's too short?

chronic839 7y ago
> I wonder what else they will punish residents for. Bringing dates back home? Having a skirt that's too short? If those are against the community rules, absolutely, they should be punished. Don't like the rules? Vote to change them or move somewhere else. You can't do this in China anyway, do treasure the opportunity.
- anarchy8 7y ago
  What an authoritarian mindset.
- dsfyu404ed 7y ago
  Rules follow norms. Rules will not change to accommodate new behavior until that behavior is already accepted. With authoritarian enforcement you can never get to this stage.

colechristensen 7y ago

I might consider living in an apartment building that traded some private space for shared common space, but the architecture of such would need to be actually usable, not the same "amenities" which are ever present in luxury apartments and mostly unused, impersonal affairs. I think the key there would be replacing the hallway of doors with shared kitchen and lounge spaces or something along those lines. I'm not interested in living in a cubbyhole inside a co-working space.

esotericn 7y ago
Right. Almost all of these places look super depressing, like something out of American Psycho. I'd expect the common room to look like a makerspace, or Grandma's house, or an artist's studio, or a game room, or maybe each corner of it is different, whatever.

simplecomplex 7y ago

I’m sick of the political opinion pieces disguised as news that amount to nothing more than “capitalism bad corporations evil” now dominating HN. Mostly NYT and Gaurdian articles. We can’t just have an article about co-living... Ugh.

aidenn0 7y ago

Prior to the baby-boom, this was a very common form of urban living, right? Yet somehow everyone has to pretend it's new: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boarding_house https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boarding_house

bitwize 7y ago

Here's how to do it on the cheap in Boston metro: Go to Craigslist, go to apartments for rent by owner, and look for a room that matches your balance of affordability, location, size, and amenities. Meet with the landlord to see it beforehand, be sure to discuss things like leaks, mold, and pests, and if you think you have a winner, move in. You will probably be sharing an apartment with three or four or five other people, but hey, that's Massachusetts. (The Ylvis song "Massachusetts" even makes reference to this.) You won't have to pay a finder's fee to some agency, you will be dealing directly with your landlord, and you won't find yourself in a situation that looks like it'll rapidly degenerate into a Focus Features dystopian art film. (Seriously? "The Collective"? You want to convince people you're not shit-tier offbrand Orwell with a name like that?)

paggle 7y ago
That’s a solution to housing, not urban loneliness.
- bitwize 7y ago
  You'll be all up on the lives of at least three other people -- some of whom figure as long as we live together, why not go out for pizza every now and then. At this point, whether you're sharing a by-owner apartment or shacking up with The Collective, your loneliness is largely a function of how aggressively you choose to sequester yourself from the people in your immediate environment. That is, until The Collective starts requiring neural implants as a condition of residency...
  - paggle 7y ago
    I can say that in my college dorm, one of the essential things was that the people near me were not random. They were my same age in the same college and in the 700 people who lived there a lot shared my interests. That’s what these facilities are trying to recreate, not just having a Homo sapiens within ten feet.

madengr 7y ago

The “Collective” in a big block building? I assume this is a pun at the Borg, but maybe not.

chrisseaton 7y ago
No this is the original meaning of collective as a noun.

tempsy 7y ago

Just give me a small space in the center of a major city for under $500k.

chrisseaton 7y ago

Has anyone here ever lived in a military mess? We’ve been doing it for hundreds of years and it can be a fantastic living experience, with communal meals and property, and opportunities to socialise, but your own space when you need it. I don't know why young professional civilians don't replicate it more often.

raverbashing 7y ago
Because in the military you have a lot of adults in the room running things and those who don't play by the rules get rightened real quickly

lazyguy2 7y ago

My vote is for "cynical corporate dormitories" Since it's such 1984-speak. Years ago they called these things tenement buildings. Although the word can mean any multi-home building, it usually is used (at least in the USA) as a reference to high capacity, low footprint, urban living arrangements. So, yeah. It's a nice way to solve housing crisis for relatively low income living, but don't act like it's some sort of innovation that people are going to find super desirable. Because most people won't. Some people do, but most people kinda want their own house.

i_am_nomad 7y ago
I’m with you on this. It’s yet another happy re-branding of unpleasant, rent-seeking, worker-hostile things. Behold: Tenement buildings -> Co-living Serfdom -> Gig economy Mass propaganda -> Targeted content

moosey 7y ago

I've been thinking about extreme co-living, with people who have a shared set of values living together and sharing not just the living space, but also wealth, to such an extent that it's basically a new-age monasticism. Regardless, the idea is crazy and out there, and probably possible with a limited subset of college professors or something like that, but still, it has its basis in shared values. Working at the same company is not a shared set of values, at least not the way that companies are structured today and how workers are seen by those companies. As such, I don't think that these living spaces can build the tribal and communal opportunities that make a shared living space workable, and make people willing to improve that shared space. As corporations become larger, and with consideration to the fact that they might start to consider these kinds of shared values and try to build based on those, it might be possible, but it's probably also illegal for a corporation to do such a thing.

closetohome 7y ago
I think you nailed it with the common interests thing. People have compared this to both college dorm living and military boarding -- but in both of those cases you're surrounded by people your age with a ton of common interests, experiences, and values. Creating a community from a mixed bag of corporate workers is possible, but it would take a lot more work.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

ta1234567890 7y ago

Idea: create clean public restrooms and showers for everyone. Place them every few blocks so they are conveniently accessible everywhere. Have well paid cleaning staff that keeps the places in good shape at all times. Have well paid security staff, train them to be empathetic and help users out, also connect them with other organizations that could provide additional help that some users might need. And have free lockers where people can keep their clothes. That might at least allow homeless people to be/feel clean, be treated with more respect/dignity and have a connection to a network of resources that could help them out. In SF it might also get rid of the shit on the sidewalks, the smell of pee everywhere (especially around bars/nightclubs) and allow for easier tourism (it's kind of a pain finding a restroom some times when traveling). Why not invest in the poor/less fortunate and give them as much as we can give them? All of society would be better off if instead of blaming these people for their situation, we helped them have a better one. PS: Amsterdam has a slightly similar concept with their public urinals. They are kind gross, but they definitely help with keeping people from peeing all over the place. And pretty much everywhere in Japan there are clean public toilets (no showers or lockers though), it's really amazing.

tenebrisalietum 7y ago
> Why not invest in the poor/less fortunate and give them as much as we can give them? It's hard to tell "less fortunate but a kind person that will be independent if given the chance" from "doesn't give a fuck and will take advantage of anything free/helpful in a destructive manner without any respect to others including those equally less fortunate or generous to him/her" Society definitely creates the second type of people but I can't fault anyone for not wanting to put themselves in a position of vulnerability for the greater good of someone who won't appreciate it.
- ta1234567890 7y ago
  You are totally right that it's a hard sell. At the same time, why "punish" everyone for the actions of a few? Also, if everyone has access to a certain benefit, it's really hard to take advantage of it in a negative way. For example you can't resell it. I feel like toilets/showers should be something like roads, ubiquitous, accessible to everyone and continuously maintained. I haven't seen people complaining about trucks/busses using the roads too much/more than them, while making money.

jccalhoun 7y ago

The only thing I miss from living in a dorm is not having to cook, do dishes, or buy groceries. I know i could just go out to eat every meal but it seems more expensive when mom and dad aren't paying for it (or I'm not paying for it with loans that I'm still paying off...)

hexo 7y ago

Co-living is total nightmare and the absolute end of human dignity since it reminds me having flatmates (I have plenty of experience with that) but in a way worse style

buboard 7y ago

Sounds like Co-Suffering

sys_64738 7y ago

This is a glorified share house which is okay for short term ness when you know it’s end date. Being stuck there indefinitely totally sucks. People want their privacy and they want more of it as they get older. There’s a reason the richer you are the more you try to distance yourself from others by more privacy mechanisms.