Living with 12 Strangers to Ease a Housing Crunch
bloomberg.com
Living with 12 Strangers to Ease a Housing Crunch
1–10 of 15 posts
Re: Living with 12 Strangers to Ease a Housing Crunch
#2Re: Living with 12 Strangers to Ease a Housing Crunch
#3Gen Z just discovered having roommates?
Re: Living with 12 Strangers to Ease a Housing Crunch
#4Gen Z just discovered having roommates?
Yea this article is bizarre, as it continually describes having roommates as if it was something unheard of before it "started in Denmark in the freewheeling 1960s and ’70s".
I also don't really buy the logic of why this hasn't spread in America (despite having multiple houses in my neighborhood filled with gradstudents):
> the model has been slower to spread, because Americans typically see their home as a primary store of wealth
I think it has less to do with seeing the home as a store of wealth than that having roommates is more often than not a pain and most people go on to have family in which case you already have people filling up all the rooms.
The main difference seems to be that it involves older people, but this speaks more to trends in starting a family later or not at all rather than anything to do with this remarkable new Danish discovery.
Re: Living with 12 Strangers to Ease a Housing Crunch
#5Sharing a fixed quantity of floorspace with more roommates isn't "easing a housing crunch", it's just accepting less floorspace, something we all do with commodities like floorspace.
What would actually ease a housing crunch would be more floorspace, so that floorspace owners had less pricing power.
Re: Living with 12 Strangers to Ease a Housing Crunch
#6The model has been slow to spread in the US because the government doesn't own such a huge share of the housing stock, and outside of basic zoning, do not involve themselves in the planning or construction of new units. Unlike Zurch where the government owns 1 out of 5 units, apparently, and even then feels the need to involve itself deeply in the planning and construction of anything new.
My personal "solution" to housing problems in the US was to move into an RV. I also get 400 sq ft, which are all mine, and I get a lot which has a nice yard with a tree that gives generous shade, and a fence enclosing the lot on three sides. I pay a similar amount in space rent ($1000/mo in Northern CA) and my RV is paid off. It also means I can move to a new city with relatively little difficulty should that need arise.
I arrived at this because the idea of cohabitating or even living in a wood framed apartment building with 50 (or more) other units surrounding me simply became untenable. I would have loved to buy a house, but the housing and labor markets being what they are, this was the best I could come up with.
Re: Living with 12 Strangers to Ease a Housing Crunch
#7What this people want is to go back to college life.
Re: Living with 12 Strangers to Ease a Housing Crunch
#8Gen Z just discovered having roommates?
Yea this article is bizarre, as it continually describes having roommates as if it was something unheard of before it "started in Denmark in the freewheeling 1960s and ’70s". I also don't really buy the logic of why this hasn't spread in America (despite having multiple houses in my neighborhood filled with gradstudents): > the model has been slower to spread, because Americans typically see their home as a primary s…
The main character of the story is 40.
I cannot imagine living in those circumstances until 40. Or trying to raise a child in that environment.
The historical idea of "communal living" meant living with your parents and grandparents as a large family unit, not moving into the city to live with 9 strangers in a rented flat.
This picture looks like the destruction of personal and family wealth to me.
Re: Living with 12 Strangers to Ease a Housing Crunch
#9When I was in college I read Dante’s inferno. Our copy was great because it showed the English translation on one page and the Italian on the opposing page so even without knowledge of the the original language you could get a feel for the tone and rhythm of his epic imagining of a trip through hell.
I’m pretty sure this article title is the name of one of the lost chapters of Inferno. I’m not sure which mortal sin one would commit in order to be sentenced there in the afterlife, maybe the owners and creators of RealPage are candidates for creating the algorithmic price collusion tool for landlords.
Re: Living with 12 Strangers to Ease a Housing Crunch
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yea this article is bizarre, as it continually describes having roommates as if it was something unheard of before it "started in Denmark in the freewheeling 1960s and ’70s". I also don't really buy the logic of why this hasn't spread in America (despite having multiple houses in my neighborhood filled with gradstudents): > the model has been slower to spread, because Americans typically see their home as a primary s…
The main character of the story is 40. I cannot imagine living in those circumstances until 40. Or trying to raise a child in that environment. The historical idea of "communal living" meant living with your parents and grandparents as a large family unit, not moving into the city to live with 9 strangers in a rented flat. This picture looks like the destruction of personal and family wealth to me.
> This picture looks like the destruction of personal and family wealth to me.
The Sackler family took mine! Older brother squandered everything before I even considered a career.
Inflation is eating whatever I scrounge. I'd call myself lucky, and yet...