The rise of 'intentional living'

(upbeat music) - Brittany, have you ever lived with roommates? And I really wanna know, do you have a chaotic roommate story? - Oh, absolutely. I've definitely lived with roommates on many occasions. I mean, I have many chaotic roommate stories, but I think the one that actually bugs me more than any of them. More than noise, mass, broiling tensions was when I had this roommate, I forgot what the issue was. It was an extremely routine roommate issue. She decided to call a house meeting, which is annoying enough, 'cause I'm like, "This three of us in here." Like, it's never that serious. You could actually call, text, do anything, emails, and a pigeon, whatever. Knock on my door, speak to you directly. But instead, which she did, she called a house meeting and she brought her mother, oh, to the roommate meeting. And so, what did I do? I picked up my purse like Annelise Keating and I said, "I don't have time for this." And I left. And I was like, "You know what, this meeting is not for me." As soon as you as a grown person bring your mother, (laughs) I'm done. I'm done. You have to bring your mom to talk to me? Get real. So you got to, I lived with other people. What about you, have you had roommates? I have lived with roommates up until about five months ago. And to be honest, I was the chaos roommate. Oh. But I never, I never called my mom. I just want everyone to know that. (laughs) And for those who haven't met her yet, this is Jordan Marie Smith, producer, and all things considered. Welcome to the show, Jordan Marie, and congratulations on getting your own space. - Thank you. Yes. It honestly feels really nice to be my myself after so many choreweels and awkward halos while passing roommates in the hallway. Basically, I was sharing space with others because, you know, living in DC alone is historically unaffordable. And even though I've stopped living with others up until earlier this year, I've been hearing about a lot of people who choose to live with other people who aren't their regular, regular roommates. - Hmm, go on. - I'm talking about communal living. This is where people choose to live with others in one house or building that's co-living, or in a group of houses that's co-housing. And it's not a typical roommate situation. They are intentional communities where people essentially build lives together. And they don't have to be blood related or romantically involved to do so. It's very different from how most people think about living with others in America right now. - That's interesting. It kind of reminds me of like a commune. Like intentional communities like maybe from the '60s or '70s. Like I know some people who have done that. Is that kind of what this is? - So commune style living would definitely be under the sombrella, but culturally, I think they're different. The co-housing and co-living situations, I've seen tend to be less rural, tend to be less isolated. They're still a little counter-cultural, but maybe not as radical or experimental as communes. Anyway, I was really interested in these modern communities because they seem so different from what I've experienced living with roommates. Because for me, having roommates honestly felt like being an adult with training wheels on. I mean, this is not to say that you can't be an adult with roommates. Plenty of adults are very happy with roommates. I just felt for me like hitting my 30s meant I should be living alone. Or having roommates meant I was stuck in a less realized way of being. But these co-living and co-housing communities, in particular, feel very much fully realized. You know, they seem intentional. They seem expansive. And they do seem grown up. And I wanted to know, ultimately, can communal living in these ways feel like true adulthood? And what is it about American culture that makes it feel like it can't be an adult experience? Hello, hello. I'm Brittany Loose, and you're listening to it's been a minute from NPR. A show about what's going on in culture and why it doesn't happen by accident. Okay, so first I want to know, how did you start hearing about these kinds of communal living situations? So Brittany, I actually spent the first four years of my life in this kind of situation. I was born on a religious commune. Okay. And it belonged to this mostly black community of Seven Day Adventists who decided to go to the mountains and build this compound with different houses on this one plot of land. They were missionaries. They had their own health food store. Yeah, Seven Day Adventist health food is something else. That's its own thing, yeah. Blue Zones, I will say that the communal living that I had growing up is kind of like a fantasy now for some people, maybe without the religious focus. I hear friends all the time dreaming about living together on a gay commune or in a communal setup. They're like, let's just buy a farm, let's buy a house and live together and raise kids. And I actually found out that my colleague, Raina Cohen, who's an author and editor at NPR, I found out that she's actually living a version of this co-living dream in DC right now. So I live in a house that I share with other people that would probably be called co-living. I live with my husband and two other couples and a friend. I just love the vibrancy that comes with living with multiple people. And I mean, since I was like a teenager, I remember thinking I was very poetic and saying that you're like a mosaic of all the people you meet. But I think there's something true to that. Certainly for me that I feel like I learn a lot, I gain a lot from the people who I'm surrounded by. So when I think about one of my housemates who, it'll be nine o'clock on a Wednesday and he's like, we should go to see the Irish folk music that is a five minute walk from us. Think of it as like, you're getting activation energy from other people. - I love that. I feel like so many people think that kind of like connection stops at college or in your mid 20s or something like that. I think it's really cool that she's experiencing it now. But I wonder how common would you say this actually is? - So it's kind of hard to parse the data that would differentiate people who are sharing houses with roommates that they don't really talk to versus people who are choosing to build shared lives with the people who they're sharing space with. You know what I mean? Because the difference is about what those relationships feel like, right? But Rana has seen a little bit of data and has interviewed a lot of people who fall more into a communal living vibe. - Stats from places like Zillow have found that a significant percentage of home buyers in the US are buying with somebody who is not a romantic partner. Often a friend, sometimes a sibling, and one read on this is the economics. - So I've seen the Zillow data Rana's talking about that shows about half of home buyers buy with a romantic partner or spouse, but 16% buy with a friend or a relative. - That's more than I'd imagine, but I mean, as she said, the economics of the housing market, they are not fab right now. - They aren't. - In the American dream that I think people will conjure in their mind as a couple, often with a kid or more than one kid, living in their own detached house, the whole white picket fence idea. So today, there I think is both an issue of the unattainability of that dream and also the undesirability of it for some people. And sometimes those things coincide. So the unattainability would be how damn expensive it is to own a house today. They were just new stats that came out from the National Association of Realtors that the price of a median house in the US is at an all time high. That's the economic part. There's also the demographic changes that we've seen a continuous decline in marriage rates. So if you want to have the classic nuclear family setup, that is just getting more uncommon and when it is happening, it's often happening later on. Also, for a lot of people, it's not the thing that they actually want. The unattainability of housing has opened up a lot of creativity for people and that has been the case on the renter market too. Like if you look at places like San Francisco where our housing has been so expensive, that's where you see a lot of these kind of big group houses and there's like a culture around it, even at this point for people who can afford to live on their own. Like when I talk to people who have made these decisions in their own life, sometimes the price comes into it that they're able to get nicer things than they would otherwise. But it's often paired with, I want to live with this person. I want to have like extra support in the household. It's that they don't want to be isolated. Sometimes economics gives people an excuse to do something that they want to do but might be hard to explain. - That makes a lot of sense. We're really in a saying. So I'm wondering, Jordan Marie, like did you talk to people who fell into that description of wanting to live communally even if they don't need to financially? - I actually did. I spoke to another NPR colleague, Michael King. - Love Michael. - Yes, we love Michael. He's also a producer. at NPR and just like what Raina was saying about Big Bay Area group houses, Michael actually lives in one in Berkeley with 19 other people. 19. Yep. And two dogs. So before I lived in the farmhouse, I lived in the Washington DC area, Tacoma Park, Maryland. And I lived in a one bedroom apartment with my own kitchen, my own bathroom, my own living room, my own everything. And it was nice. It was it was my own little world. But I just felt like there was more that I want to experience with other people. I found out about it maybe about three years ago through Craigslist. I had a keyword saved for a co-housing or co-op. And I would get an email every once in a while. And I was at a turning point in my life. And I wanted to make a change and I applied to it. And the rest was history. We're going to take a quick break. But first, if you're a long time listener or brand new to it's been a minute, be sure to come back every Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday for brand new episodes. And did you know you can make it even easier to get new episodes by hitting the follow or subscribe button on your favorite podcast app? Whether you're a new friend or a loyal bestie, join the team by subscribing today. Coming up after the break, we have this saying and co-housing, does everyone need our own lawn mower. And that's a really simple way of saying, why do we need all of our own stuff? Stick around. What do you think is going on culturally that might drive people to want to live communally, like even if they don't have to? Well, there's been so much said about the loneliness epidemic that we've all heard about by now. And I think there's a vibe shift for a lot of people where they're putting real thought into making sure they have people around them. And like that's so much easier when you live alongside others. Trish Becker-Haffner, the director of the National Co-Housing Alliance, said this about it. We've grown up in a society that prioritizes privacy, that prioritizes the individual. Our neighborhoods are literally designed with cars at the center. If you picture a street in a typical American neighborhood, it's the garage that you see. So people are able to go from work to home and back again, enter their garages without making eye contact with the people that live next to them. So over half of Americans report experiencing pervasive loneliness. And we know that loneliness is killing us. Loneliness is correlated with higher risk of heart disease, dementia, depression, anxiety. And so co-housing seeks to solve loneliness by building networks of support by designing neighborhoods that make it easier for people to know and care for one another. And therefore, if we have these strong communities, we're more able to solve problems. I come from a suburban bedroom community, and the type of community that she is talking about, like I don't like the back of my hand, it's very clear from what she's describing and from what I've experienced that there is an intentional architecture there that can be very alienating. Over time, that does kind of take its toll. Totally. One thing to make note of though, she's talking about co-housing. It's a bit different than what we've been talking about up until now, which is sharing a house. AKA co-living. Co-housing is like a group of houses or living spaces all connected with people who govern the community and share resources together. You get your own apartment or townhouse or house, and there are also shared spaces where people gather. So the principles of co-living, but with a bit more personal room. I don't know, this seems kind of like a good half step for people who don't want to be all up under other people, but also don't want to feel cut off from others entirely. Exactly. There are approximately 140 existing co-housing communities in the U.S. today. There's about the same number in some stage of development. So we're seeing a growing interest in co-housing and all models of communal living. Trish told me she thinks the big bad behind the Scooby Doo mask that makes all of us so lonely in America. It's guess what? Capitalism. Capitalism fosters isolation because when we are isolated, we're more likely to consume. This idea of the quote-unquote "American dream" tells us that we need a large house with lots of space to store all of our stuff. We have to have our own things and we have to accumulate as much as possible. And that is what success looks like. And so co-housing turns that on its head. We have this saying in co-housing, does everyone need our own lawnmower? Where is their potential for sharing? Not only of products, but also how much of our spaces in the traditional American home sits vacant almost all the time or is used to simply store stuff. And so co-housing is built on this idea of if we can share more, we can reduce our footprint, we can be kinder to the planet, we can have reasons to connect with one another. And beyond that, when we experience a deep sense of belonging, we are called less to consume. That is such a good foundational question. Do we all need a lawnmower? There are so many things like that that many of us could look around our homes or apartments right now and see that we do not touch once a day, a week, a quarter that are costly and would be really easy to share. I'll say this as somebody, I'll be honest, I don't think I want a co-house or co-live with anybody. I have enough people in my home. We have reached capacity for human beings in my home right now, with just me and my husband, we are at capacity. However, I do think that I mean, she makes a really excellent case. It's like getting back to like foundational principles of like, you know, borrowing a cup of sugar from your neighbor. It's a skill. It's a skill and some of us have lost it regardless of how we're living. Exactly. So with communal living, it's both solving resource problems and loneliness issues. Now, we've been talking about communal living as an alternative to the classic nuclear family unit, but that doesn't mean kids can't be part of it. Trish was telling me, raising her baby with the support of others was part of why she joined the co-housing community in the first place. My colleague Reina, who co-lives in DC, also told me that new parent isolation was something she didn't want for herself. I will say in my own case, like one of the major motivations to live with friends at this particular stage of life and with these particular friends was that we all have an intention to have children and we realize that the default is to have to kind of withdraw from your social life, but that's a very time where you want to have other people around. You want to have adults around. Your schedule is really constrained and it's just so nice to have people who are right next door or right in the living room. So I think there is a bit of a value change and that there is growing recognition about both the pervasiveness and the kind of toxicity of loneliness and how important friendship is, how important relationships outside romantic relationships are and that also some of the demographic changes around marriage or people having fewer children mean that people are also being more imaginative about how they set up their lives. Honestly, this sounds really beautiful. I mean, it definitely sounds utopian for sure, but I don't know. Is it all hunky-dory all the time? Not for everyone. It's just a different way of living. It solves loneliness problem, but other problems come with that and I wanted to see what it's really like. So I'm walking up to the Tacoma Village co-housing little compound and there's like this big orange colorful building. I met up with Alicia George. She's one of the members of the Tacoma Village co-housing community and she showed me around. All right, so this is the common house and this is the room that is our main group. Some people call it a great room. It's kind of our dining room. It's where we have our meals. It's where we have our membership meetings. You can see we have this screen here and we have movie nights. We have parties, birthday parties, dance parties, you know, it's where we cut up the pumpkins and we have our check-o-lantern party. It's as adorable inside as you would expect, but I wanted to see how things actually ran. I was allowed to sit in on one of their budget allocation meetings, which I do have to say started in a little bit of a funky way. Oh, community member Robin Phelps facilitated. All right, I want to invite everyone to move your body a little bit. This is such. a great way to arrive. You can wiggle, you can stand up, you can stretch. Oh, can there something silly or something normal like for first silly? Noisy. Yes, noisy is okay. Okay, we get our wiggles out just like we're all just like kindergartners, right? I love that this approach will work for the right people. I'm invested in what's going to happen in this meeting I have to say. I'm glad you are because it got a little heated while they were talking about budgeting for the refurbishment of a security gate. This is community member Debbie Winston. I object plain and simple. This seems like an accelerated rush to an inadequate solution for the reasons that drew outlined and we've been without for six months. I am willing to do some of the the legwork and research, but my offers have not been accepted by the individuals that I've spoken with. So yeah, I feel vulnerable and that's not okay. Debbie told me later she basically never objects and meetings like these, but she wanted to make sure her strong feelings came across in a consensus-based system and basically everyone I talk to acknowledge that making decisions and getting to consensus with a medium to large group of others is hard. Here's my colleague Michael again. Sometimes you have to make decisions as a group when you want to be quick about making a decision. You don't always get your own way. When you get 19 people together, there's going to be conflict, there's going to be disagreements, but not in a bad way. It's just the normal everyday living. So we work on those things together and that's been a change for me for someone who has lived alone for so many years to not have to solve every problem himself. That's such an interesting way of thinking about it. I don't live with a group, obviously. I just live with my husband, but I think about one time and one apartment we were in, there was like a very total freak and emergent flooding issue in one of the rooms of our apartment. But I remember when we split up, I was able to go to Home Depot and buy a bunch of towels and he was able to start figuring out a shovel water out of our kitchen. I did not have to solve that problem on my own. We were both able to utilize our skills, work together. That push pull is really helpful when you're living with other people. That's the whole proverb, if you want to go fast, go alone. But if you want to get there, I don't remember how the whole proverb goes. Fast, alone farther together. Right. Like that. Exactly. You might have heard the phrase that goes like, if the price of community is inconvenience, it's annoying to hear that all the time, but it's actually really true. You know, whether it's walking up six flights of stairs to go to your friend's cat's birthday party or sitting down for a multi-hour budget allocation meeting for your group house, to thrive with others means feeling friction sometimes. Anyways, there's a cost to it, but you also get a lot in return. Here's what Trishbacker Haffner had to say about it. People think, oh, that's, you know, that's not for me. That's too much togetherness or that would take too much of my time. I think it's true that community takes time. You know, we ask that people invest their time, their labor, their energy. But living an isolated life also takes time. There are so many hidden costs in living life alone. The difference is that community gives something back to you. You receive what you put in. You receive a return on the investment that you put into community. For the Tacoma Village co-housing community, they needed more time to figure out the security gate problem but the time they invested in the meeting paid out for other issues. Any other concerns? Seeing no concerns, we have consensus. Happy dance, happy dance. All right. Okay, I would say they definitely earned the happy dance. They definitely earned the happy dance. Yes. So Jordan, you did all this reporting. You went to a co-housing community, talked to all these people. At the beginning, you said you felt like you had to live alone to be an adult. Do you still feel that way now? Well, okay. So even though I live alone now, I still don't feel like an adult to be completely honest. I don't know when I will. And I don't know if I'd ever live community again because I have to say I really cherish my space now. But I get why it's a good option for a lot of people. Just thinking more about the demographic changes and economic realities that make it really hard for people to form families in the traditional sense. I totally see why a communal living might be a more creative way for people to grow into their most realized adult selves. Outside of the nuclear family, with like 2.5 kids and a white picket fence and one lawnmower for every house, our opportunities for that have changed. I think our ideas about family are starting to change with it. So I get now why my friends are fantasizing about living communally and it doesn't have to stay a fantasy. Jordyn Marie, I learned so much today with this conversation. Thank you so much. Thank you so much Brittany for listening to everything I've had to say. That was Jordyn Marie Smith, producer at All Things Considered. This episode of It's Been a Minute was produced by Liam McBain. This episode was reported by Jordyn Marie Smith. This episode was edited by Nina Patuck. Engineering support came from David Greenberg. Our supervising producer is Sheriff Vincent. Our executive producer is Barton Gurdwood. Our VP of programming is Yolanda Sangueni. All right that's all for this episode of It's Been a Minute for Penn PR. I'm Brittany Loose. Talk soon.