Tenants in a giant co-living Bay Area palace are looking for new roommates

San Francisco Chronicle / sfgate.com ^ | Updated 12:56 pm PDT, Friday, August 7, 2020 | By Andrew Chamings

[Vendome]

Beautiful area...

[PIF]

Tenants in a giant co-living Bay Area palace are looking for new roommates having either eaten or fleeced the previous tenants

[stinkerpot65]

A wide variety of diseases...

[Susquehanna Patriot]

My thought as well. They should be required under the only too common leftist zoning laws to allocate 20% to low income tenants.

[Lisbon1940]

I don’t think Piedmont allows co-housing.

[sphinx]

Accessing archived databanks here: but back in the late 1970's, there were as many as 30,000 "alternative" communities in the United States. (I was researching utopian communities and cast the net widely.) These ranged from the traditional religious groups such as the Amish and Hutterites to the little hippie communes. The Mormons in their earlier separatist days were another good example; today, the Mormons and Mennonites are generally integrated into the wider society but still retain considerable group distinctiveness. I always had a special fondness for the Amana colonies, largely because of the orderly way in which they eventually distributed their communal property; they "privatized" the commune, very successfully. The really successful and long-lived alternative communities tend to be religious and highly patriarchal, which is important to know. Some of the secular groups are highly ideological and have self-conscious utopian aspirations, but most are just groups of like-minded people with shared frustrations who are looking for a different and more satisfying way to live. Opting out of the rat race and retreating to a small town or agrarian lifestyle is a common theme. I know, I know: you may be a hard core type who would just toss your guns, tool kit and 90 days rations into the pickup and head out into the woods, or escape to your getaway farm that you bought 20 years ago, but most people need more support in cutting loose. Communities like this provide that support.

The first thing to know is that participation is voluntary. The second thing to know is that the ability to make such a choice has intrinsic value; it may not work out, but at least you can give it a try. The third thing to know is that most people are fairly short term residents of such communities; they get to scratch the itch that is driving them to seek alternatives, but they also get a quick education in the hassles of group living. In a cohousing situation -- which is a fairly common arrangement -- members of the group often spend way too much time in meetings trying to work out community issues. Sometimes everyone is great and it works well, but quarrels over chores and who gets to assign chores are chronic. The emphasis on group togetherness can become oppressive. People develop interests and friends outside the group and are pulled away. Projects come up (including needed repairs and/or enhancements to the property) that involve a fair amount of money, and that leads to disagreements. People eventually pair off romantically, both inside and outside of the group, and then children come into the picture. There are a lot of parts in motion. Most people cycle through fairly quickly. It can still be a good experience and a learning experience, but both participants and outside observers should have realistic expectations.

Without knowing a lot more about this particular group, my guess would be that there is a core group of long term tenants for whom this arrangement works very well. They are then constantly recruiting new housemates to round out the community. The typical resident is probably still young, just a few years out of college, still single, obsessed with work and looking for a continuation of a college living experience. They're using a group housing arrangement in lieu of a college dorm or student apartment complex, and if they're work-obsessed geeks, they probably like having an artificial set of friends thrown into the deal.

As long as they're good neighbors, keep the property up, and don't slide into an abusive sex and drug fueled situation, more power to them. It's really just a big group house, an ok place to hang out for a couple of years before tackling a marriage and a mortgage.

[AppyPappy]

“I can’t imagine how awful it would be to share a place with a bunch of lefties. “

All trying to out-virtue each other and seek cracks in wokeness in others.

[AppyPappy]

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2001-jan-27-mn-17823-story.html

The Story of Y2K community Rivendell

[sphinx]

Good catch. I'm not going to pay the LATimes to read the link but I found writeups elsewhere. It sounds like an interesting story with a very typical outcome. People think they will be simplifying their lives by fleeing the big city and joining a small, theoretically more "self sustaining" community (by which they usually mean that they have a big communal garden, some chickens, and maybe a few dairy cows). But since they still buy their metal tools, buy their clothes, use electricity, own cellphones and computers, drive a pickup into town to trade at the local farmers market and see a doctor, they are still embedded in the broader economy and have to earn enough money to sustain their chosen lifestyle. Some make it work, which usually means developing and scaling up a community based business. The rest quickly discover why their great great great grandparents fled rural poverty and took a job in town.

People who DO make this work may have started out as hippies, but they end up as very pragmatic small businessmen. They may keep the tie dyed bandana for old times sake, but they come to understand that society is complex because we have an incredibly complex division of labor. If they still want the internet and don't want to pick their own cotton or tan their own hides to make shoes, they really can't step away from the division of labor. And NONE of them have any respect for trust fund hippies who rusticate in comfort on daddy's money and strike pretentious poses about how they are practicing a morally superior lifestyle.

Another problem is retaining the young people. The founders may all be scratching the same itch, in which case they may stick it out. But their kids usually have other ideas. The hippie success stories usually age out. The religiously based communities have more staying power.

[sergeantdave]

These used to be called boarding houses. The best ones would include dinner.

We (the local American Legion) tried to set up a boarding house exclusively for vets. It was a 12-bedroom mansion with a large dining room and kitchen. Price was dirt cheap because nobody in their right mind would want to tackle the monthly maintenance costs.

We had carpenters, electricians, plumbers ready to refurbish the house.

For a percentage of a vet’s social security, retirement or disability payment, the vets were assured two meals a day, a private room and a community living space. Weekly nurse visitation. The whole venture was designed around the veterans home concept that was prevalent in the late 19th century.

Then the state and local bureaucrats smashed the plan to pieces.

[Jan_Sobieski]

Sodom? Sleep with 1 eye open!

[AppyPappy]

I found Rivendell Rd in Willis (near Floyd) and I found a Covenant Church about 7 miles away. It is mentioned along with Rivendell. They had about 30 people in the community. If Y2K had been a disaster, I think they were assuming that number would triple.
Floyd County is a healthy mix of rednecks and hippies. Doug Thompson, publisher of Capital Hill Blue, lives there.

[Zathras]

I knew a rich guy who setup a mansion in Los Gatos for the same thing.
A real sleaze of a guy.
The perfect example of how many women are only looking for $$$.

He rented it to women and then ended up sleeping with them.
When they broke up (always end result), they moved out and he rented it to another woman.

Hopefully by now the guy is dead.

[Rebelbase]

Since they advertised for renters they legally cannot discriminate based on race, color, disability, religion, sex, familial status, or national origin.

They may not like the can of worms they have opened.

[Disambiguator]

Where was it you tried to do this? The old adage “no good deed goes unpunished” comes to mind.

[Oatka]

I wonder how the $1,600 a month pod people are doing. Remember them?

[sergeantdave]

The late, great state of Michigan. The American Legion post had made a bunch of money from a land sale and was looking for a good non-profit expenditure.