If you are curious and sincerely interested in this general concept, check out what we are doing at https://focusretreatcenter.com and ping me if you want to set up a prototype trial run scenario for your group/concept. We already did the "buy a giant house for cheap" part and are still experimenting on exactly what to do with it.
Charter Houses (2022)
41–48 of 48 posts
Re: Charter Houses (2022)
#42https://www.radicalroutes.org.uk/
Hippies have been doing housing co-ops for a long time, and they work kind of like this, and they are mostly (in my experience) cool places. A bunch of people get together and buy a house which they can then live in as a community. As time goes on people move in and out, and in general these function as very cheap shared housing with no landlord and (usually) a flat, non-hierarchical structure. There are usually expe…
> these places attract thoughtful, creative, slightly weird people and are shining beacons of an alternative way of doing things.
.. and overwhelmingly examples of "people don't do this for that long in the same place". I'm still trying to figure out if that is important.
Re: Charter Houses (2022)
#43A few relevant links:
• A Technology Freelancers' Guide to Starting a Worker Cooperative: https://institute.coop/sites/default/files/resources/356%202...>
• The Tyranny of Structurelessness: https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm>
• https://runningahackerspace.tumblr.com/>
Re: Charter Houses (2022)
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
You’re taking my one added data point and extrapolating. I did not say that communes can’t work.
You heavily implied it by discussing a negative experience, its consequences, and speculating that the communal aspect was the root cause. I am a little bit surprised that you are denying that core point.
Is it really a commune/communal space when one person owns the entire property?
Re: Charter Houses (2022)
#45I generally love this idea but, historically, the risk with people building private communities that they're in charge of is that they may or may not turn out to be abusive tyrants and you can't do much about it and probably the abusive tyranny will come out thirty years later with a lot of "I told you so"s. c.f. cults, "dude ranches", "wilderness therapy", foster homes, asylums, etc; the list goes on quite a ways. A…
Maybe I am just being unimaginative but it seems that civil society with its institutions evolved precisely to handle conflicts and allocate resources between individuals who lack a strong emotional bond. Those bonds do exist in families and it seems over the long run that families are probably the exception to the need for intermediating institutions. I bet successful private communities, intentional communities, et…
More likely they speedrun the mistakes that civil society at least in principle has fixes for.
Re: Charter Houses (2022)
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because community. Tossing money over the wall via an LLC doesn't automatically do that. There are no shared dinners, no impromptu coffee chats, no late night conversations without cohabitation.
Does buying a home and letting people live in it automatically created shared dinners or coffee chats though? I can't say I've ever done that with my landlord. And yeah, my landlord doesn't usually live with me, but I've also had a fair share of roommate arrangements where we were friendly but not exactly friends. Certainly not eating meals together.
In the broader picture, where most adults are lonely and can't make friends, being negative and focusing on the friendships lost thru community housing seems a bit myopic. If the multitudes of relationships gained aren't worth the ones that are burnt - and I am not minimalizing those that are being burnt - it truely sucks to lose friends - but if, over the years, you haven't managed to gain more friends than you have lost, then something is wrong.
I can't say what, because I don't know you and your circumstances, nor your morals, or lack thereof, but it's Saturday night where I am, and I'm going to go enjoy it with friends that I've been avoiding, in favor of doom scrolling.
Re: Charter Houses (2022)
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
You heavily implied it by discussing a negative experience, its consequences, and speculating that the communal aspect was the root cause. I am a little bit surprised that you are denying that core point.
Is it really a commune/communal space when one person owns the entire property?
whether or not that it is the case is an absolutely fascinating question, but one that does not have anything to do with bluepizza's point.
Re: Charter Houses (2022)
#48On a tangent. My partner worked for several years as a healthcare assistant at the (possibly?) original Charterhouse[1] in London. One of the infirmary residents he looked after was Dr Bill[2] - a truly remarkable and fascinating person who was still studying and working well after his 100th birthday!
[1] - https://thecharterhouse.org/
[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Frankland_(allergist)