Why You Should Try Co-Living
Very brief thoughts on why I've enjoyed living with lots of roommates
I realized the other day that I spend something like 10 hours a week having conversations with my roommates. In fact, talking with roommates is probably my largest hobby by time-spent. I absolutely love living with lots of roommates, and think living in co-living arrangements has been one of the best weird things I’ve done with my life so far. I thought I’d take the time to explain why, in case someone reading this sounds like it might be that good for them too.
First, I’m probably a bit unusual in terms of extroversion. I get a lot of energy from being around and debating other people. I’ve noticed that my general happiness is tightly (positively) correlated with how many people I live with, a trend that has held over several different college dorm setups, apartments in different cities, and co-living arrangements. Full disclosure: I have no siblings, so it’s also possible that a fair amount of the satisfaction I get from co-living comes from finally living out my dreams of having siblings from a young age.
I’ve lived in living arrangements by myself, with 2 roommates, 4 roommates, 6 roommates, 13 roommates, 23 roommates, and then dorm situations with in one case roughly 19 people and 30 people I interacted with on a weekly basis respectively. I think the magic that makes it worth of the label “co-living” kicks in when you get above 4 total roommates. I also think college dorms and clusters of apartments close to each other should probably count, if there is some kind of daily-used shared space (a lounge, a kitchen, a living room), or people are often hanging out in each others’ living space.
The first reason that co-living is great is that it makes socializing very low-friction. Rather than needing to reach out to each other to schedule a time to meet and coordinating a location, good co-living arrangements usually have a destination that you can effortlessly walk into, whenever you’d like, to work, talk, or play in the presence of other people. This suffuses my life with much more socializing than I otherwise would have, since I’m often very busy, and find that having social fulfillment always on tap, with no logistics required, makes me consume a lot more of it than I otherwise would.
Always having peers to talk to and be around makes difficult times in life easier. I find that it’s very hard to be lonely when living in a co-living arrangement for this reason.
The second reason to live in co-living is the feeling of group identity, depth of friendship, and (*wince*) network that it effortlessly brings. Because co-living brings down the coordination required to hang out with friends, it lets you form deeper connections than you otherwise would, and work on longer projects in collaboration with each other than you otherwise might. In past co-living arrangements I’ve been in, hackathons have been common, travel with large groups of roommates seems to happen more often, and parties are easier to plan. In San Francisco, I’ve also found that the people living in co-living houses are unusually motivated to work on side-projects building things together, getting involved in other local initiatives, and hosting things.
Most people, for most of their life, live with close family members, usually including either their parents or children. I think that this environment gets some of the benefits of co-living, especially the constant social fulfillment. But for those who are in-between life stages, I think possibly more should be open to the idea of having lots of roommates.