What Is Coliving? The Long Version

What coliving truly means, what coliving is not, and how the term is gaining a new significance.

It’s 2019 and the term coliving is buzzing in the news. For many, it seems to be a new concept, while historically speaking, coliving has been existing as a living concept for centuries.

What we are experiencing is not the rise of a new term. Rather, we are witnessing the growth of an existing movement, and more specifically, the emergence of an industry.

This article will explain what coliving is, how coliving has been growing over the last decades, and what coliving means as an industry. It attempts to shine a light on a term that is being used in too many ways, and offer a blueprint to understand coliving in a twenty first century context.

Ultimately, coliving is nothing new. What we’re about to discover is that it’s the term’s significance that is changing dramatically.

A growing trend

The term coliving has been buzzing in the last couple of years since early adopters started believing in the concept as an alternative to current housing models. Between May 2017 and January 2019, Google shows a rise in interest for the term coliving of more than 400% - and the trend seems to only have started (yes, kind of looks like Bitcoin in early days).

The downside of popularisation is that terms can mean nothing and everything at the same time. Especially at the early stage of an industry - in which some players are trying to define the term by creating meaningful services around it while others are taking the name as a trendy label - one must rethink what coliving truly means before getting into the game of words.

Terms can also be misused if influencers lack understanding. Back in 2017, an article provoked a social media harassment on how coliving ironically just “invented roommates” - making fun of coliving itself and showing its lack of originality.

Let’s therefore first look at how coliving is being used in our modern context.

Is coliving truly nothing new?

The short answer

The short answer is - no, it isn’t new. Coliving has existed for decades, and we’ll take a look at a few examples of coliving forms in the past and present in the next part of this article.

The long answer

The long answer is: as a wider, more mature and established audience starts to desire forms of communal living, coliving is growing into a movement and industry of its own.

There is a shift occurring in the amount of people who are ready to live in coliving spaces - not by necessity, but by choice. The rise of remote work, collective intelligence, and a global collaborative mindset is making coliving a viable alternative of living for many, including established families and individuals. When looking at the lower price spectrum of coliving spaces, it is also a solution to the rising rental price epidemic, and satisfies many people’s need for flexible and short-term housing desires.

And hence, we’re seeing coliving rise for the first time in history as an industry that satisfies a new lifestyle outside of traditional cohabitation spaces (such as student housing).

2019 is going to be the first year that the coliving industry is going to make a wider impact due to institutionalized backing, and the years to come are going to be crucial to define coliving as an industry. Let’s therefore first analyse what the term coliving truly means.

Defining coliving to its core

The most basic definition of coliving is “a residential structure that accommodates three or more biologically unrelated people” (Bothell, 2015; Tummers, 2015). As George Green points out in “The Logistics of Harmonious Co-living”, “the ‘co’ has been proposed to mean ‘Collaborative’, ‘Communal’ and ‘Collective’, and thus includes a wide variety of practices” (Vestbro, 2010).

This broad definition allows multiple types of coliving spaces to exist under its label - claiming the same title yet being ruled by very different industries, services and intentions.

While this definition includes models such as student housing, hostels or senior housing, let’s first explore what coliving is not to remove any potential misunderstanding.

Defining what is not coliving

Family-centered living

If a large number of people live under one roof, it is not considered co-living as long as they are blood or family related. In the case of Ziona Chana, head of the world’s largest family with 39 wives, 94 children, 14 daughters-in-law and 33 grandchildren (yes, 180 in total and counting), he does not run a coliving space - even if he manages operations bigger than many coliving spaces, hostels and even hotels can dream of.

Compounds, which can be found in many developing countries around the world, would also fall into this category. While many families live under the same roof, share the same amenities, and eat together, they are inherently familial. Without a connection to the family unit, you are most likely not welcome to live in a compound long term.

Communes and co-housing facilities

Especially in northern European countries, co-housing has become popular as a means to create community and share facilities such as large kitchens, laundry rooms and kindergartens. The difference between co-housing and co-living lies in the fact that families still live separately under different roofs and put the sharing emphasis on activity areas. The same applies to communes, such as the Kibbutz, a specific type of settlement unique to the country of Israel.

Apartment complexes

People share the same roof, yet apartment complexes do not share main amenities such as kitchen, bathroom, or living rooms. And even if some do, the majority of those still include private amenities that don’t force or encourage the tenant to live in community. This applies to most build to rent facilities that have been constructed predominantly in the UK.

The first coliving models

Coliving evolved over time and disappeared in certain forms from our modern society. Major reasons were due to socio-political changes and a shift in societal and personal needs.

Female boarding houses

Stated in CityLab’s 2016 article “A Brief History of Co-Living Spaces”, professor Wendy Gamber explains how in the 19th and 20th century “between one third and one half of nineteenth-century urban residents either took in boarders or were boarders themselves”. Some of them, like the Jeanne D’Arc Residence in Chelsea run by an order of nuns, offered a home for “friendless French girls” who immigrated for work as seamstresses or caregivers. During World War 2, boarding houses also offered shelter for men stationed in foreign places.

First attempts for commercialised coliving

As Matthew Steward points out, large coliving facilities existed already in the early 20th century. “Isokon” was a project in the 1930’s in north London that offered individual rent, communal spaces, and services around the coliving space. Nevertheless, the project failed and similar concepts were started again in the late 2000’s, with projects such as The Collective in London.

Coliving for socio-political agendas

The 1938 Kensal House project - which you can still visit in London today - by Maxwell Fry (a founding member of the Modern Architectural Research Group) and Elizabeth Denby, was constructed to relocate lower end social workers from urban slums into the city while maintaining low rent. Not only did it offer two to three bedrooms per apartment, but also allowed a kindergarten, communal areas and laundry services. The concept ended up not being commercialised due to its original social intent.

Coliving as a utopian model

In the late 1960’s, coliving emerged in Denmark as a way to challenge the status quo and explore models built upon the egalitarian principles of sharing, equality, and participation. For example, the feminist movement in Sweden in the 60s introduced co-living as a way to balance gender roles (Horell & Vestbro, 2011), and shared houses during the San Francisco Hippy movement have been experienced and documented in Maxime Le Forestier’s song “San Francisco”. Ultimately, coliving transitioned from being a socio-political statement to exploring sustainable ways of living, which is becoming the latest trend.

It’s a blue house Hanging in my memory We come there on foot, we don’t impose Those that live there, having thrown away the key

Contemporary “coliving” models

While the majority of the population do not live in coliving spaces, coliving in its purest form is actually quite prominent. Let’s explore the main coliving models, often not even branded as “coliving” per se (although that too might change).

Flatsharing

Coliving doesn’t require operational excellence or a commercialised entity - and while many associate flat sharing with students, it also works with teams. For example, Mark Zuckerberg moved into a 5-bedroom house in Palo Alto back in 2004 with parts of his first Facebook team to live and work.

Student dorms

The majority of coliving spaces are just that - student housing. Mostly for financial reasons, yet also for a desire for community, students have the tendency to take on commercialised student housing for its simplicity, practical location and sometimes advantageous housing prices. The challenge here remains with intentionality, as many student housing experiences don’t always turn out to be great and thought through.

Senior housing

Who would have thought? Almost no one currently attributes senior housing to coliving. But senior housing is all around and will continue growing, based on the increasing number of seniors in our population. Senior housing doesn’t have to include day-care - in fact, there is a growing population of single and coupled seniors in perfect health who desire more community and shared spaces. Hence senior housing is next to student living and flat sharing the third biggest coliving market in the world.

Boarding schools

Not only undergraduates and graduates profit from flatsharing. At boarding schools, student dorms are often included and mandatory for participating students - many of them for the entire duration of the school attendance. While the logistical experience is often similar to university housing, the smaller size of boarding schools often creates a tighter community feeling than current large American universities.

Squatting

This is the most unheard form of coliving, but historically played a significant role. From political activists to homeless people squatting for housing needs, there are and have been many types of squats, some of them built on intentionality and clear community values. As a side-note, the majority of squats are not coliving spaces - while there are almost a billion people living in squats in the modern world, according to Robert Neuwirth, author of Shadow Cities: A Billion Squatters, most squats are rural slums that mostly entail family-centered housing.

The grey zone: what about hotels, festivals and guest houses?

Hotels, hostels and guest houses

According to our definition, those houses do accommodate unrelated people under one roof - and yet, the living setup can be quite different.

On one side, residents staying in these types of places can be considered co-livers, especially if there is intentionality, long-term stays and shared common areas. Podstel, a Bucharest-based award-winning hostel, not only accommodates its short-term residents, but builds its concept around “solving the need for belonging and growth”, according to founder Daniel Beaumont, who has been inspired from his personal growth journey through traveling.

On the other side, the temporary nature of these living formats are often for short-term travel purposes, hence not falling into main residency types of living. Moreover, many hotels and guest houses do not have shared main living areas, offering private kitchens and living rooms, which makes them fall out from the shared living concept.

Camping and festivals

The Burning Man festival? For most people, not a coliving experience either. It’s true that people commit to sharing resources, food, kitchen amenities, and hang out spaces, yet the majority do not share rooms, RVs or tents with more than one non-related person.

The future of coliving models

The fact is that coliving is growing as a trend because it’s starting to appeal to a wider audience. We will therefore have to expect coliving spaces to differentiate themselves from their current and past models. Here is how we predict it will turn out.

Making coliving a viable long-term alternative to single-family rental housing

We believe that the major differentiation between old and new coliving models will be if coliving becomes a financially viable long-term alternative to the single-family housing rental units, and offers a better experience.

In the past, coliving existed mostly for shorter periods of time - or out of necessity. As it becomes a personal choice, coliving will be redefined if it succeeds to become a viable long-term alternative to single-family housing rental units. As the coliving industry is still young, it is hard to make a judgment at this point of time whether it is moving in the right direction - yet, most coliving spaces do not exceed a one year stay, after which residents choose to move into their own (or shared) housing.

In the future, coliving will appeal to a wider audience as an alternative to single living if the experience exceeds that of single-living. We believe that there will be three main factors of differentiation compared to old coliving models, and that the industry winner will be the one integrating the best of all of them, or by doing outstandingly well in one.

Financial affordability

At this point of time, coliving spaces are above average rental prices (this is a subjective observation from analyzing over 200 spaces worldwide). That seems normal given that the industry is new and hence has to scale. As coliving companies get more knowledgeable, they will be able to reduce management costs and thus resident prices.

Yet coliving can not become a viable long-term alternative if it exceeds the consumer’s price point. In order to consider living in a space for several years, the price point will have to change dramatically if coliving wants to conquer the masses, unless its experience gives it an additional value that some are ready to invest in.

Intentionality behind the experience

We can observe that coliving places are already adopting more intentionality behind their coliving concepts. For example, the coliving space Cohabs refers to coliving as “a modern form of housing where residents share living space and a set of interests, values, and intentions”, while the non-profit initiative Co-Liv defines it as “any shared living space that improves quality-of-life for its residents”.

There seems to be a trend of intentional coliving spaces, which I wrote an article about back end of 2018 - and that niching down to values or specific interests will create niche coliving spaces that desire to increase the life experience of its audience under one or several key areas. I’d therefore propose to use the term “intentional coliving” to differentiate experience and transformation-driven spaces with purely residential ones.

Intentionality is reflected in every area of the coliving space - from its core values to interior design choices, experiences offered to the community and community building, which leads us to our last main criteria.

A strong community

Living with others implies de facto the community aspect. People joining coliving spaces by choice will bet on the power of the curated community - and base their experience upon the synergies and serendipity that the community will create for and with them.

As a side note, building community will be one of the major challenges for coliving spaces that want to scale up. Current solutions have been to outsource the community management, empower residents to lead the group and create in-house experiences through a dedicated host to bring the community together - and I’m curious to see how crucial the role of a community manager (or host) will be for community building in the future.

What if coliving doesn’t change (much)?

Then it’ll still exist as it’s known today. Coliving doesn’t have to be a viable long-term solution, nor does it have to be intentional and community-based in order to develop as an industry, as current and past coliving forms are showing.

Nevertheless, I strongly believe in the shift that is occurring in the perception of intentionality, community and affordability to make coliving a more viable, long-term alternative to single-family housing rental.

Coliving models ranked by their probability to form long-term and large-scale coliving

If the latter is the case, we might expect intentional communities and highly affordable coliving spaces to take over the market - differentiating itself by experience and financial affordability.

Is large-scale coliving a realistic vision or will it remain utopia?

This century will tell. Whether housing-as-a-service or self-organised communities, it is up to those who build the spaces to take ownership of their responsibility to shape the answer to that question.