The Struggles of The Independent and The Communal Solution
The idea of eventually living alone for me sounds isolating. I enjoy living with my family and although I don’t want to live with them my whole life. I am definitely content living with them now. But if I were to ever move out it would be into most likely a shared apartment or home with friends or potentially a partner.
But in North America it can feel that true success does not come until one owns a place, not renting but actually owning where they live. While this can be a nice dream to have, the reality of the matter is that chances are getting slim.
Some young adults have looked towards other possible solutions towards combating the cost of living. As we take a look into the concept of communal living, I hope you will learn a thing or two about the history, general cost of living that is causing the shift and the “Tiktokification” of the communal living lifestyle.
Making a meal for two from store bought ingredients while following the recommended Canadian Food Guide is a costly endeavor. According to Statistics Canada over the span of two years there has been an increase in prices by 8.7%. This makes it difficult for low income people such as students, retirees and those unable to work full time, to afford to eat a full and complete meal.
Potential solutions to this issue is gardening, the act of growing your own fruits and vegetables for your day to day living. This can be a small operation. Especially if you live in an apartment complex where space is limited to a balcony. You can pick up a gardening bed from a Home Depot for the price between 30$ to 200$. And grab a couple bags of your favorite veggies and you are good to go. If you live in a condo or a home, there is more flexibility with space and you can invest in potentially a couple gardening boxes. If neither of these options are available, a simple veggie garden by a window does the job too.
Alternatively, there may even be a community garden near you! Community gardens have been a global trend in places like South Africa, Germany, Mexico and the States. While in places of economic prosperity these gardens are mainly recreational, but in the Global South these spaces turn into community aid for food security, social capital development and resilience. (Kanosvamhira, 2)
A super neat bonus is if your neighbors also garden, you guys can trade vegetables that the other one did not grow or begin a cycle of reciprocation. With this is an increase in community and creates a sense of belonging, something that can be missed in the present. In an article by James Hamblin titled How to Talk to Strangers he states that people who found their neighbors friendly and trustworthy were less likely to have heart attacks. As this reciprocation relationship grows there leads to a potential for friendship and with that comes the opportunities to host community potlucks and the friendly sharing of food.
Additionally, rent has become almost unbearable, where apartment prices have risen over 250 000$ since 2016 in Metro Vancouver. Nathan Zemp writes that part of this increase has to do with zoning costs increasing by $200 000. (37) Many either live with their parents still or live with friends or perhaps even strangers. These are forms of communal living but they tend to only last for a small amount of time while one is in their 20s-30s. After that there is almost an unstated rule that one must live alone or with a partner.
The concept of communal living is nothing new. During the Great Depression, single room occupancy rose in popularity with landlords splitting their units to accommodate more people. (Svistovski 466) Additionally boarding houses remained a staple at the time since the 1800s, while it was inexpensive both these concepts provided the renters a sense of community also. These ways of living decreased with tighter regulations that led to some of the decline. But now in 2024 there has been an increase in curiosity towards the communal living lifestyle. With this came a website called coliving.com which offers 36,000 rooms and coliving spaces around the world! For example, while searching for a place to stay in Liddes, I found a beautiful Chalet that costs only 858$ a month. While these are just temporary coliving much like dorm rooms, there is a secret idea of coliving. The idea of living in a compound with multiple families, with shared kitchens and living spaces.
This kind of living can seem out of the ordinary but when you look back into the past, they were the norm. Many Indigenous groups formed communal housing, some specific examples include the Trobrianders. They form housing where the men live all together and the women live separately with their children. If they have a son, the son would stay in his mothers house until he turns 5 and move into the men’s house.
In more recent years, talks of starting communes have been on the rise. With aesthetic videos of how the life style looks like or the funny things that come with living on a commune. But it would not be without backlash. Many face rude comments due to the perception of them being a potential cult. This comes from a place of them being a counterculture or an “Other”. In general, we as a society are wary of those who don’t follow the social norms. Additionally, with social media being somewhat anonymous it comes to no surprise that trolling and bullying run rampant.
Under many of these videos I would see a recurrence of these troll comments or hate comments among all the comments of those interested in joining or starting a commune themselves. While I can understand the concern some people may have for these groups. Some do then to take their concerns too far and it can actually cause these communes to get shadow banned off the internet.
Another important thing is to reflect that what these creators may share on social media does not reflect the reality of communal living. Their platforms may reflect an “aesthetic society” described by Sherry Turkle on Wired, “aesthetic society” is the appealing lifestyle. It is untenable in reality but through snapshots of this individual’s life it can appear as a potential solution. This most definitely applies to these TikToks where we do not see the full reality and the messiness that comes with living in a group. Some creators have come forth and shown the realities behind communal living such as TikTok creator @essysparrow
It is not often that we hear these kinds of opinions on communes that are formed in a more unbiased opinion. With @essysparrows personal experience we can see that although communes are presented as a way to foster community that there is still the opportunity that it may actually prevent it. As explained in their Tiktok this is because they will tend to just stay within the commune never getting close with the locals of the area.
Overall, the idea of communal living seems like the potential solution to the extreme rises in the cost of living. And even though the idea is nothing new, we as a society are finding out the best ways to build these communal communities while dealing with the very real realities of conflicts, money and community. As one looks into a communal living community it is integral to remember the big picture of what these folks’ lives may actually look like and away from the camera. Because at the end of the day, no one’s life is rainbows and unicorns 24/7.
Work Cited
Government of Canada, Canada’s Food Guide. 12/1/2024, https://food-guide.canada.ca/en/
Kanosvamhira, Tinashe P, “Exploring Urban Community Gardens as “Third Places”: Fostering Social Interaction in Distressed Neighbourhoods of Cape Town, South Africa.” Leisure Studies, Taylor & Francis Online, 11/27/2023 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/epdf/10.1080/02614367.2024.2383481?needAccess=true
Oppenheimer, Mark, “The Subtle Art of Ignoring Strangers.” The Atlantic 07/18/2016, https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2016/08/civil-inattention/497183/.
Statistics Canada, “Consumer Price Index, monthly, not seasonally adjusted” Statistics Canada 10/19/2024, https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/tv.action?pid=1810000401&pickMembers%5B0%5D=1.2&cubeTimeFrame.startMonth=05&cubeTimeFrame.startYear=2024&cubeTimeFrame.endMonth=10&cubeTimeFrame.endYear=2024&referencePeriods=20240501%2C20241001
Svistovski, France, “Burning Down the Housing Market: Communal Living in New York.” Fordham Urban Law Journal, vol 47, no. 2, 02/2020, pp. 463-505, EBSCOhost, https://research.ebsco.com/c/2spsko/viewer/pdf/o7q3vml2kv.
Turkle, Sherry, “Who Am We?” Wired, 01/1/1996, https://www.wired.com/1996/01/turkle-2/
Zemp, Nathan, Housing Prices in British Columbia: Quantifying the Zoning Effect. 2024, Simon Fraser University, https://summit.sfu.ca/item/38130.