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International Dec 3rd 2020 edition

Nuclear retreat

The pandemic may be encouraging people to

live in larger groups
In lockdown people see the appeal of housemates
Dec 5th 2020
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I n march, when Britain went into lockdown for the rst time, Andrew Davidson, a
69-year-old retiree who lives alone, was in the middle of renovating his house in
the small town of Leamington Spa. The kitchen was a building site so he accepted
an o er from his sister to move in with her and her husband in Birmingham for a
couple of weeks. Before leaving he asked the builder to put in temporary kitchen
surfaces so he could move back in if they couldn’t stand living together. Mr
Davidson ended up staying away for nine weeks. It was “absolutely brilliant”, he
says.

In the mornings he would go for a walk with his sister or brother-in-law, or they
would do gardening. In the afternoons they retreated to their own spaces to work on
their own hobbies: German lessons via Zoom, Spanish study, and textile printing.
They ate dinner together, sharing cooking and all-important baking duties. “Living
together was a bit of a revelation,” says Mr Davidson. “I was quite sorry to move out.”
He says after his experience he would consider moving in with other people on a
t b i i th f t
permanent basis in the future.

As lockdowns have limited socialising beyond cohabitants or small groups known

as “pods” or “bubbles”, stories abound of people moving in with others to lessen
isolation or share housework. In fact, the pandemic may merely have accelerated an
existing trend. More and more, people in the rich world are once again choosing to
live together.

In Britain households where couples share with at least one other adult were the
fastest-growing type in the two decades to 2019. In Canada 6% of the population
lived in multigenerational households by 2016, and it was the fastest-growing type
of living. By the same year a fth of Australia’s 24.5m people were living with others
from outside their immediate family, a 42% increase on 15 years earlier.

How modern families increase social inequality | The Economist

Such enthusiasm runs counter to Western notions of individual freedom and
privacy. Fights with family or atmates are the stu of common lore. But it is
single-family households that are the outlier in the broad sweep of human history.
From hunter-gatherers to workhouses, people lived in big groups, often including
non-relatives, pooling resources such as food and sharing tasks such as cooking
and child care. It is only after industrialisation, when work moved outside the
home, that people in the Western world started to live in nuclear families.

In much of the world living in bigger family groups never stopped. Almost two
thirds of households are extended family ones in Senegal, for example. Extended
families provide a safety net where the state does not, pooling cash to pay medical
bills and letting jobless nephews eat from the communal pot. Even in the West, the
perception that the two-adults-two-kids family is the norm is outdated. In America
the share of households made up of married couples with children halved between
1970 and 2019. People are marrying less and later. Marriages are less likely than they
were to last until death.

Yet the splitting of the nuclear family has taken its time to create an explosion of
new household types. Instead, much of the West has seen a dramatic rise in single-
person households. From France to Japan, they make up over a third of the total
number. In Germany they account for 40% of the total, in Finland 41%. Communal
living, at least beyond student halls, retirement villages or monasteries, is “often
seen negatively or as a cult”, says Irene Pereyra, a designer who is running a project
on communal living with ikea, a Swedish furniture rm.
Indeed, that is the appeal to some people. David and Kim Gotterson, an Australian
couple in their 60s who lived for many years in communes, said they were rebelling
against the materialistic society of their post-war-generation parents. “We wanted a
pure, more natural way to live,” says Mr Gotterson. Environmentalists note that
sharing homes is friendlier on the environment than having separate ones. Since
the 1970s some feminists have emphasised the bene ts for women of living with
other women.

Communal in ltration

Although some choose to share out of belief, recent interest in shared housing has
been sparked in large part by economic pressure. In Britain, where nimbyism makes
it extremely di cult to build new homes, the average house costs more than eight
times the average salary, up from four times in the mid-1990s. Homes are less
a ordable for single women, who earn less than men. The number of older
divorcees who live alone has gone up. In the absence of new construction, this
squeezes the supply for younger people, who are less wealthy. “As more people lose
their jobs [because of the pandemic] or have their pay or their hours cut, sharing a
household with more people is a way to pay the bills,” says Bella DePaulo of the
University of California, Santa Barbara, the author of “How We Live Now”.

Companies have jumped on this opportunity. The Collective, a British out t, runs
three co-living buildings, one in New York and two in London. Its “members”,
whose average tenancy is nine months, live in studio ats but share lounges, gyms
and a roster of events from cocktail-mixing to running clubs. The rm has another
9,000 units in development.
 p

Although urban buildings run by the likes of The Collective are aimed mainly at
young, single professionals, the types of people seeking to live this way are growing
more diverse. The Collective houses people aged 18 to 67 years old (the average is
30). A survey by Build Asset Management, a British rm that runs serviced
accommodation, said that in the year to June 2020 it saw a 136% rise in inquiries
about shared rental accommodation from couples. Kin, an American company, last
year opened two buildings in New York designed for families rather than singles or
couples. Would-be residents can choose an apartment with up to four bedrooms
and access to communal facilities and services, including a play area and nannies.

The most experimental housing today involves multiple generations of unrelated

people who did not get a say on whom they lived with. Perhaps unsurprisingly it is
found in Scandinavia. Some 60% of the residents of the 51 apartments in Sällbo, a
public-housing project in the Swedish town of Helsingborg, are over 70. The other
40% are young people, half of them refugees. Residents must pass an interview to
get into the community, and sign a contract to spend two hours per week
socialising with neighbours. This could mean sitting in a shared lounge reading a
book or doing shopping for one of the older members. The project is to run for two
years. If it is judged successful, tenants will be given permanent homes.

Crossing multigenerational boundaries has social bene ts, says Dragana Curovic,
the manager. The young, especially the newcomers, learn from the older people,
who in turn appreciate the young people’s help with practical things, she says.
Isolation is unhealthy. One metastudy reported that people without strong social
connections have a 50% higher chance of dying early—equivalent to smoking 15
cigarettes a day. A Swedish study of people over 75 years old found those with a
variety of happy connections with friends and family had a lower risk of dementia.

Many other aspects of life can bene t from communal housing, too. Parents of
small children nd it easier to go out to work if they can leave their o spring at
home with other friendly adults. Chloe and Alex Wol , a couple in their 30s, and
their baby son moved in with Alex’s parents for seven months from March to
September. Ms Wol says she would not have been able to go back to work six
months after giving birth, had she not been living with her in-laws. At that point all
the nearby nurseries were shut because of covid-19.
Ben Brock-Johnson, a 40-year-old journalist, moved from New York to live in
Pioneer Valley, a community of 32 homes in rural Massachusetts, with his wife and
their now ve-year-old twins. The community has shared gardens, as well as a large
communal dining area and an events space. He says it is “like having 100 parents for
your kids”. There are people around—including his parents, who live on the same
estate—who can play with them, baby-sit them and just generally look out for them.
His family, he reckons, have a much better work-life balance for it.

The disadvantages of sharing can be mitigated by design. Grace Kim, a Seattle-based

architect who lives with eight other families in a building designed by her and her
husband, says her development balances community and privacy—most people’s
concern about living communally. “You can see into some people’s kitchens but not
their living rooms,” she says.

Decision-making can be slow. You have to work with neighbours even if you do not
like them. You cannot simply ignore them. However, as in the workplace, people
who have to get things done together often put aside their di erences and get on
with the job. Communal living might, conceivably, help bring divided societies
together, at least a little.

Fallout shelter

Few governments promote it, though. Landlords in Britain need a special licence to
let single homes to multiple families. In New York individually rented apartments
with shared bathrooms are banned (to discourage brothels). During the pandemic
governments have warned of the dangers of big households: sociable youngsters
may bring the virus home to their grandparents. Multigenerational living may
partly explain why ethnic minorities have been so hard-hit by covid-19 in Britain.

Proponents of communal living say it has made lockdowns more bearable. Ms Kim’s
community stopped having 40-person communal meals. Instead, it set up pods of
two to three families who could dine in well-ventilated shared spaces. In Sällbo,
younger residents have gone out to shop for older ones who are shielding, says Ms
Curovic. Lisa Feardon, a doctor who worked long, arduous shifts, says returning to
her home at The Collective in London was “a lifesaver”. In a normal rented at she
would have “just come home and collapsed doing nothing,” she says. “But as
everything is under one roof here I was able to still have some sort of work-life
balance.”

Mr Davidson, whose house is now renovated, says while the pandemic continues he
will be staying at his sister’s a couple of nights each week (in a support bubble). The
pandemic has forced people apart. But for an increasing number, communal living
o ers a way to stay connected. 7

This article appeared in the International section of the print edition under the headline "Nuclear retreat"

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