In the U.S. there is a lot of speculation and concern about the housing market. Here is another approach to housing.
Once upon a time I lived in a communal house in San Francisco, California. It is said to be the oldest commune in the city, having started about 1958. It is called East West House. I lived there for six and a half years in the 1980s.
The land and house were purchased by the original members, with $600 apiece. They charged themselves a monthly rent of $65. Part of it went to pay the mortgage payment, part for utilities and miscellaneous expenses, and the rest accumulated in a savings account for the house. When one by one they moved out and new members moved in, they were reimbursed their $600 out of that house savings account.
The deed was in the name of the member with the best credit references. He moved out and encouraged everyone to get incorporated so his name would be off the deed. He didn't want to be legally responsible for someplace he was no longer living. East West House became incorporated as a "Mutual-Benefit Non-Profit Corporation." By the time I moved in, the organizational aspects of the household were long before fine-tuned and agreed upon by everyone. I think they were pretty cool.
Here are some of them that I recall.
1. Shared Cooking
Every member takes a turn, in rotation, cooking dinner for everybody else. We were 13 members (plus dinner guests). Every night there was a homemade meal that we shared all together. Sundays there was a day off. No cook. That meant each person cooked once every two weeks.
I loved it! When it was my turn to cook, it was special, not something routine that I had to do every day. On my first cook night of the year I always tackled a new menu that I had never tried before. One time it was Vietnamese food. Another time it was gutting a big red snapper I bought at a farmers market and making fish chowder (I had never gutted a fish before... or since).
Dishes and kitchen clean-up was also rotated. So we each had one cook night and one dish night every two weeks. You could choose to do them both the same night, or to clean up for someone else's cook night and they cleaned up for yours.
Article comments
1 - Ruvy
A usual, Lynette, an article that is thought provoking, and which provides doable solutions for most people. Thanks!!
2 - John Wilson
Very interesting. Thanks for writing this article.