We have touched at different times about housing lifestyles. This CBC https://www.cbc.ca/radio/ideas/why-d...rket-1.5979554 article nicely summarizes all the reasons for co-housing. It includes input from architects, researchers in co-housing around the world and social scientists as well as an author.
After living on over a 100 acres of property, I had a hard time thinking downsize and loss of privacy. I walked around condo living and walked away. Covid challenges have made me very grateful for the space to move freely around in my house and yard.
Will the cost of housing drive this trend? Would you live in a co-housing arrangement? I won't at present but may change my mind.
Quotes:
"Everyone having their own private space, their own private backyard — it's really unique in history. It's a relatively recent phenomenon," according to urbanist Diana Lind, author of Brave New Home: Our Future in Smarter, Simpler, Happier Housing.
While there's a health concern to some shared spaces right now, advocates believe that more co-living — such as group-owned houses, co-ops, rentals with common kitchens and workspaces, communes and co-housing communities — can diversify urban housing options and increase affordability.
Sharing domestic space is not as radical as it sounds. Historically, humans have lived collectively, communally and in multigenerational spaces.
It's single-family homes that are the exception.
Lind notes that they are a 20th century phenomenon, built for post-war nuclear families and the car culture of the time.
"This is not the way that we've lived for most of humanity."
She says our demographic realities now support the need for change.
The 2016 Canadian census revealed a majority of households consist of one to two people with smaller and less traditional family households on the rise. That's also true of the United States, U.K. and other European countries, as well as Japan.
Immigration and social changes have reshaped our configurations of family, too.
With the work and social future in flux, Lind argues that we need to rethink an urban housing supply that she said is designed for the past.
A network of communal living houses in San Francisco, the Haight Street Commons, has been a special focus for Bhatia and Steinmuller.
More than a dozen Victorian houses and warehouses have been converted into hundreds of rental rooms with substantial common space.
They also share an intentional approach to living.
Steinmuller said these "communes 2.0" differ in some ways from their 1960s ancestors. "