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Immediately!

5 (4.7%)

1-2 years

5 (4.7%)

3-5 years

15 (14%)

6-10 years

24 (22.4%)

This is stupid.

39 (36.4%)

Never

19 (17.8%)

Total Members Voted: 107

[Vector]

And in this setup you'd have forced interactions all the time, because from what has been said in the thread bathrooms and kitchen facilities would be communal and if you've got 4 people to a bathroom pretty good chance there's going to be someone else there as you go in or out, not to mention every time you want to eat or drink there's likely to be someone either in the kitchen to get something or just hanging around there.

Living in a commune is the worst place for someone who hates forced interaction

1. Unless everyone else decides to cook their pot of curry at 4 or 5 in the morning, I imagine I'll be fine.  An in-room fridge works wonders for preserving leftovers and keeping me away from annoying people.

2. Outside-bathroom conversations: "Hi there.  Later."  Seriously.  Having lived in a couple of dorms for two years, with people far more outgoing than B12 folks seem to be, I can tell you that bathroom conversations are not the most taxing.


Living in a commune is not the worst place for someone who hates forced interaction.  For that, I'd have to say that living with one's family is the worst--because you're tied to the commune by money and your family by blood/responsibility/motherly guilt (and probably also money/assets).


Other thing: living in a commune for a little while would probably be a good preparation for living in Europe, which I fully intend to do at some point--for years, not a handful of months.  If I can't get along with a little subset of my fellow Americans, how on earth would I get along with a country full of people who don't speak my language, a few of whom I'll probably wind up living with despite having never met them?

Simply put, I don't think the barriers on this are that large.



Also, who cares if it's a "sausage-fest?"  So you have a bunch of dudes living together.  Big deal.  I say this, of course, as the only female member of my high school's "nerd club," and as a math major who is the only girl in many of her classes.  It just honestly doesn't matter that much to me.

[Retro]

Retro, to Aqizzers comment

I agree with this, actually, and hadn't considered it much

This is pretty much what I said earlier as well.

Yes, but his comment was on a more general level, while yours was why you specifically were interested. The group wherewithal connection wasn't so obvious in what you said, only your own.

I only asked your age, because most of the people who make the cult-commune connection seem to be a few years older than me at least, and I was wondering if the trend was continuing to hold true.

The cult thing was a joke :\ I don't think anyone honestly thinks you are trying to recruit and brainwash new followers.

Retro

But since you're curious, I'd be quite satisfied with living with friends, getting a job I like that can support me and possibly a future family, and eventually settling down with my significant other.

This would be great for you, I'm sure... [...] But if I don't do this thing (and there's a chance it will fizzle no matter what I do), I'm probably going to do something else you'd consider equally stupid, because the times in my life I've been the happiness are always the times where I've committed myself to something everyone else thought was stupid.

I'm not sure why you think I'm being so hard on you. I don't think you're being stupid; my main concern is that people are committing themselves to this without any forethought into how it will actually be on the basis of "lol bay12 house crazy times!!1" As the only person who seems really into this and explicitly for the sake of living with and meeting new people, I don't think anything I originally said was directed at you. I'd just rather 'lukewarm' people think about this a bit more realistically.

[GlyphGryph]

But if they think about it realistically, they might not come! That would be terrible!



And the cult thing, its just weird because I've got no mental connection in my head between cults and communes. They seem diametrically opposed by definition, since cults have strong leaders and are generally hierarchical, while communes are supposed to be composed of equals who work things out together. I've had people talk to me dead serious about how starting up a commune means I would be joining a cult. I never even thought of the connection before that.

[Heron TSG]

Sausage-fest? Let's look at who will be living here.

For the committed, I'll be married at that point, and the SO has agreed to come. So that's equal gender.
Vector has said she'd come for a while if it happened (female).
Considering that's the closet things approaching commitments that have been stated so far, I think it's quite an assumption.
[...]
I only asked your age, because most of the people who make the cult-commune connection seem to be a few years older than me at least, and I was wondering if the trend was continuing to hold true.

I'm 16-ish, have two differently shaped chromosomes, and I will probably show up if it happens. I'm 75% sure that I'll be going to a college in Seattle, so any possibility for affordable housing would be a good thing to look into.

[GlyphGryph]

So two guys, two girls.

Still not a sausage fest!

Also, something I wanted to mention earlier but forgot about, I should say that number-wise, I was thinking something more along the lines of 7-8 rather than 20 as the goal. Maybe grow into a larger number eventually, probably most of them temporary renters, but there's a whole host of issues there we might not want to deal with.

[GlyphGryph]

I just realized exactly what it is we're starting.

Shit, lets be a co-ed fraternity.

[Footkerchief]

Also, who cares if it's a "sausage-fest?"  So you have a bunch of dudes living together.  Big deal.  I say this, of course, as the only female member of my high school's "nerd club," and as a math major who is the only girl in many of her classes.  It just honestly doesn't matter that much to me.

I'm not saying you should care, but I care.  I've turned down chances to live in houses that were all-male, and ones that were heretofore all-female -- it's just too homogeneous.  Also, being the lone female in the situations you mentioned isn't entirely comparable to being one of the many males.

[LordNagash]

Edit to add: Err, that is very long and impassioned. Now I feel kind of silly for writing it. I guess it's mostly just - I can understand why you guys wouldn't be interested. But if you really truly think it's such a terrible idea - why are you even in this thread participating? That part I guess I don't really get.

...Because the point of a forum is to have a discussion? Because I'd hate to see anyone run off to do something like this half-cocked and then find out they'd moved across the country and spent money on something they'd never really considered? To make you think about your own idea and maybe see some of the flaws?  If you say something in real life do you expect everyone to just agree or walk away?

To me the major problem with this is it seems sort of short-sighted. I mean sure it fits your circumstances now, but when you're down the road and you have a wife and kids and a steady job are you still gonna want to be living in a college dorm type environment? Is your wife? Are everyone else and their wives/husbands? If not, how do you get more people to make up rent when people move out? If a couple of people become unemployed, where does the cash come from to keep the place afloat?

Starting something like this is akin to running a business, you have to have everything planned out ahead of time to make sure everything runs smoothly, and posting 'hay guys lets all live together in a commune' on a forum with the target date of 'any October' just doesn't really suggest that level of planning to me.

Edit: Someone made the analogy of making a video game, and to continue that analogy games don't get made by someone going 'hey let's make a game!', they get started with someone having an idea for what kind of game they want and how they want to do it, and showing other people that plan and getting them on board. Same deal here.

[GlyphGryph]

If you say something in real life do you expect everyone to just agree or walk away?

No. But now I think I know where you are coming from.

To me the major problem with this is it seems sort of short-sighted. I mean sure it fits your circumstances now, but when you're down the road and you have a wife and kids and a steady job are you still gonna want to be living in a college dorm type environment?

Yes. Most of the other options hold not even a shred of appeal that could blossom into something more.

Is your wife?

Probably not. But life is about compromises, and since we don't share much the same opinion of nearly pretty much anything ever, we are well versed in compromise. We'll deal with it.

Are everyone else and their wives/husbands?

Hopefully! But hopefully the structure will also be set up in such a way that not everyone has to commit to a long term stay.

If not, how do you get more people to make up rent when people move out?

Hence the discussion of location near a college campus, so rooms can be rented out when this inevitably happens?

If a couple of people become unemployed, where does the cash come from to keep the place afloat?

This is a problem that affects any sort of living arrangement. Wouldn't a support network actually minimize the impact over, say, relying on oneself as the sole breadwinner?

Starting something like this is akin to running a business, you have to have everything planned out ahead of time to make sure everything runs smoothly, and posting 'hay guys lets all live together in a commune' on a forum with the target date of 'any October' just doesn't really suggest that level of planning to me.

Everything has to start somewhere. And you don't open up a business without first ascertaining if there is, in fact, any interest among your customers to patronize it. And even then, baby steps. Building up. How do those details get worked out if people don't talk about them?

[qwertyuiopas]

What size of building are you thinking of?

[Duuvian]

Can I be a squatter?

Also, might be interested if there are jobs to be had.

[LordNagash]

If a couple of people become unemployed, where does the cash come from to keep the place afloat?

This is a problem that affects any sort of living arrangement. Wouldn't a support network actually minimize the impact over, say, relying on oneself as the sole breadwinner?

Well, owing money to people you live with is never really a good situation to get into, and it can cause a lot of friction. But in ideal circumstances, sure, if everyone else has enough money to pick up the slack. If they don't, one person going down brings everyone down

That's pretty much all my problems with the idea laid out there, incidentally. Whether you guys go ahead with it or not, and GryphGlyph I am thinking you will because you seem pretty devoted to it, I wish you the best of luck. I just wanted to make sure everyone had actually thought about what they were signing on for here before agreeing to it, even in a 'yeah maybe in 5 years' way.

[Graebeard]

Buzzkill, dude.

That's just, like, your opinion, man.

Seriously, though, it's interesting to see relatively interesting discussion on this topic.  We're fairly intelligent people, and I sometimes wonder what we could do if we turned our thoughts away from humor and dwarven engineering and focus on interesting real-life issues for a few.

To wit: here's a relatively simple plan for a group of 8ish people to acquire the requisite property.

• Cut a hole in the box  Find a suitably sized and located piece of real estate.  I found this one in 2 minutes on Craigslist.  $300k for 5 bedrooms, 3.5 bath only 14 miles out of Seattle.  Could easily fit 6-8 people depending on how many couples were involved, or you could look for something bigger.
• Buy the house.  This is easier than you think.  All you need is $60k (20% down, or even less if underwriting requirements relax again) and someone with good credit who has a job.  Finance the rest with a traditional mortgage.
• Right now interest rates are low.  4.61% according to Freddie Mac.  Assume that goes up to 6% by the time everything happens.  That means you're financing $240k and your monthly principle and interest payments are $1,438.  According to public records the yearly real estate taxes on that property are $2,523, or about $210/month.  Add in a homeowner's insurance policy at $100/month and you've got a total housing cost of $1,748/month.  Call it a cool $1,800 and that's still only $300/month per person, not including utilities.
• So, what about the down payment problem?  Easy, sell a 1/6th interest in the community to each shareholder for 10 grand.  Bam, $60,000.  Shareholders can sell their portion back to the community for the price they paid, or the community could be nice and factor in appreciation and principle reduction on the mortgage so that you get more out than you put in.
• ?.?.?.?.?  You could also have a bank account in the community's name for meals, the mortgage, and improvements, and repairs.  All members (shareholders and renters) would make monthly payments to this account.  If it is run well, we could set it up so that the account runs at a surplus, so that there's money for fun projects the community, or so that there's money sitting around to cash out shareholders when they leave.
• Profit.

Obviously, there's a lot more that would go into it re: planning and community agreements, but it's nice to see that the numbers could work out pretty well.

Edit: fixed links.

[Graebeard]

I forgot to account for bargaining on the price of the house...  I'm sure you could work something lower if you wanted.

Speaking of, let's say you wanted to be in the middle of the city.  Here's a 4-flat in Capitol Hill with 8 bedrooms total for only $1,075,000.  Talk em down to $800k and that's only $100k/bedroom in the middle of Seattle.  Easy access to any jobs, schools, boutique coffee roasters (at least 4 within a mile's walk) and only a block from Volunteer Park.  Seems like parking's good, but I'm not sure about yard space for a garden...

Or you could go a bit further our for something with more space.  Seems like there's farmland about 30-40 minutes east of Seattle.  Not sure what prices out there would look like.

[GlyphGryph]

I like it, Graebeard!

I was doing a bit of my own searching earlier, there definitely seems to be a lot of perfectly real estate opportunities. Of course, I'm sure a lot of them will be less good in a couple years - but we should still be able to get something nice, and that sort of economic justification is a big part of why I would like to make this happen.