Group living

 Lola Milhollan, Time -  Group living continues to be stigmatized and misunderstood, but it is widespread and long-lived. The nuclear family is a relatively recent ideal, built on a racist, classist foundation. Before the 1930s, multigenerational households in the U.S. were the standard. Even today, just shy of one-third of adults live with a fellow adult who’s not their spouse, romantic partner, or a college student, and more people in the world live in communal settings than nuclear ones. Group living represents a galaxy of ways to structure our home lives. In the face of growing economic disparity, unaffordable housing, the loneliness epidemic, and women’s disproportionate domestic labor, we need to become more flexible in how we conceptualize family and home.

For the past 17 years, I’ve lived in a communal household in Portland, Ore., with three (and sometimes more) housemates. Living together has been a tactic for financial survival. I moved into the house in 2007, during the first throes of the Great Recession. Most of my roommates were and are artists with unimpressive salaries. And we’re not the only ones struggling. On the West Coast, we face an acute housing crisis that has obliterated the possibility that most people could buy a house, yet home ownership is still presented as the foundation of financial security. Many of our neighbors within the working class can’t get a mortgage, minimum-wage workers can’t afford rent on market-rate apartments, and the number of people without shelter rises all the time. Group living isn’t a solution to housing inequity, but sharing costs can make the difference between being able to afford a roof over our heads and living on the street. MORE