Discover Top Posts Tagged with #shared living

Have you ever thought of co-living? The gray house pictured above was purchased, and the land turned into Sabin Green, a co-housing community. It’s an alternative to living in a tiny house and not having enough room.

This is the property now. Portland, Oregon allows co-housing. The property features 4 homes built on a 75’ by 100’ lot. The single-family home remains but the detached garage was converted into a 576 ft2 (53.5 m2) cottage.

A second home and a 530 ft2 (49.2 m2) accessory dwelling were built as well. The four homes face onto a central courtyard, but they also have access to shared gardens, a community room with space for visitors, and a bike storage shed.

The sharing doesn’t stop with physical improvements: residents also use just one Internet service, share a newspaper subscription, and meet for weekly dinners.

The project is home to a diverse group, including a young couple, retirees, a single woman, and a small family. Residents Laura Ford and Josh Devine paid just under $150,000 for their 530 ft2 (49.2 m2) home.

The orange building is a shared tea house.

This green house used to be the garage. This kind of appeals to me.

https://smallhousebliss.com/

#co-housing #shared living #alternative housing

I’m not sure where this exchange came from or the background to it anymore, but it’s important enough on its own as a discussion of transitioning from private to shared ownership of tangible property (land, housing, vehicles, tools, businesses, etc). If you’re the author and want it removed, let me know, and if you know the source I took this from let me know too please.

Someone somewhere said:

“It's the social dynamic of land ownership and project management. When one or two people throw their hearts and souls into working to buy land and start building on it, they almost always form in their minds an image of the community that they are working towards -- and Every Other Person who arrives is going to, in some way, want to vary off that daydream. The original people say no, that's not what the community is about. Those people lose engagement with the project and leave. This process repeats more times, with the details different enough each time that the founders conclude that it's the other people being unreasonable or bad fits, not a pattern having to do with them. So eventually they decide that community was actually asking for too much and change the goals of their land project entirely. This happens a lot to people with the best of intentions.“

One response was:

“none of us can authentically own land in the first place, as the entire system is corrupt and racist, and specifically predicated on land theft.”

Which I saved to add to this text b/c I agree with it and think it needs to play a central role in discussions about ownership and shared finances.

From the original poster (I think):

“The best option is to start with more people being financially invested in the first place, which I understand is more easily said than done. However, you can still acknowledge and attempt to avoid the consequences of the power differential involved in having a land- and equity-holding class vs an equity-lacking class. It is, in fact, easier to conceptualize when you imagine the written agreement you'd need to do this with a group, and scale it down.

For starters, make an LLC and keep the land in the LLC's name so that adding future members to the equity group is possible. Have a written contract of what makes a person deserve equity, and acknowledge contributions -- not just the original land purchase, but also labor towards creating and maintaining infrastructure and community. Set up a mortgage-type system where "the community" buys the property off of the original landowner or landowning group over a period of 10-40 years, so that there's a defined moratorium of the period of time that the founders can hold their foundiveness over others' heads. Allow people who grow the community and make it a more valuable spaces share in profiting from this.

Give people a reason to pour their hearts and souls into the project of building the community, instead of a system where they will leave bitter, disillusioned with community, and with nothing to show if they desperately throw themselves into contributing as they best can, but for social reasons, they aren't a good long-term fit with the other people trying to establish a community. Don't have them leave with nothing to show for that.

Oh, another important point: This system is also necessary in order to give the founders the ability to walk away without selling the land out from under the community. Healthy community relations are held together by everyone having a viable exit plan, so that they don't stick around to the detriment of the project because they don't feel like they have better options. That includes founders. If they don't have a viable exit plan, they are increasingly likely to use power-over-others to maintain the land as a space that marginally fulfills their needs, even if that's to the detriment of the other communitarians around.”

You can definitely argue about the point of “profiting” from helping to essential an IC, but I would say that you definitely need to offer something in exchange for founders/builders that isn’t directly tied to continued membership and physical participation. But I also come from the viewpoint that moving in/out and between communities should be natural and encouraged rather than a problem, while other groups set up their systems around the idea that people will commit for life.

#intentional community #communal living #shared living

my roommate: [even thinks of touching the thermostat]

me:

#king of the hill #roommates #shared living

Me to myself every time I see my flat mates:

“I need my own house”

#room mate #flatmate #shared living #problems #social #issues #bills #people

A rule for a shared living space:

If you or a person you are responsible for (friend, partner, unwilling target) spill or shed blood in the shared space it is not my mess to clean up. You are responsible for the blood of any person you brought into the space.

#looking at you natalie #i know youre sick but theres blood on the floor for reasons i cant quite understand #izzy at home #shared living