I really liked when I learned that “co-housing” refers to designed neighborhoods but “sharehousing” refers to designing a single dwelling for group living.
My favorite model is group living and so that is why I would ask for a “sharehouse” tag.
Also, this is good because in Australia I received a lot of feedback that “co-op” was not necessarily a favorite word for group housing or sharehousing due to different feelings about co-operative corporations and/or co-operative organizing. So “sharehousing” seems like a more broad term that includes co-ops but doesn’t exclude non-co-ops in group living.
It just means people living in the same house rather than separated units.
Could be anything from a hostel to living like a “family” by “Western” understandings but not necessarily blood related.
Worker owned businesses and worker owned co-ops can couple well with it, if it works out, because of successful familiarity breeding “efficiency” in tasks.
However, since people are “interchangeable” through the application/trust-building/responsibility-agreements process then you could see some short-term turn over even in a place where long-term living agreements are the norm. You could even have a certain percentage required to live there for 6 months-to-a-year minimum while leaving room for some people to be there under more “hostel” type guest agreements where the expectations, responsibilities and privileges are different. WWOOF and HelpX could supplement the work and give people an opportunity to make friends and see a new place (i.e. the sharehouse).
If there were some more crossover in community space e.g.; a big shared kitchen, multiple shared bathrooms (the rule in Minneapolis IIRC was one bathroom per 10 folx, rounding up*, so 29 people required 3 bathrooms in the building, and since it was three floors there was one on each floor) then many “normal” houses could become a sharehouse and even some apartment buildings or new architectural forms.
*By the way, depending on the culture, you’d probably want to increase that or have some split between showers and restrooms so that each was always available separately. (Rather than someone showering causing a restroom to be closed or vice versa)
In contrast, group housing or co-housing typically means “planned neighborhood” instead.
If people close their doors and stay in their homes, and interaction requires a lot more deliberate action, it doesn’t work for every group; it can indeed lead to communities feeling (to some) just like an annex of a city rather than a community with the closeness qualities folx are seeking.
Also, the word “interchangeability” doesn’t apply well to every sharehouse. In some cases, the trustbuilding is intertwined with deep relationship building and culture building beyond a co-op, frat or sorority or similar group house. For some, it really is like a family. Or roommates who love each other (platonically or otherwise), and there’s a more pronounced grieving or emotional response to people leaving.
That’s not my preferred situation, since I don’t think I could date a group of people, and I think it can get into cult territory, but just clarifying that “sharehouse” applies to a wide range of lifestyle choices.
The commonality is that “sharehousing” refers to designing a single dwelling for group living.
There are also many communities that incorporate a sharehouse (or more than one) within a cohousing or ecovillage situation. This is a really wonderful way to increase the diversity of living perspectives within a planned area. It is also potentially a “proving grounds” for those who decide they want to settle in and move from the sharehouse to the co-housing area of a community.
Maxeem, I really this idea and term – sharehousing. I’ve often been at a loss for good words to differentiate “5 people splitting a house because rent is $$$” and “5 people intentionally creating and sharing a house because they want community”.
Our intention in creating tags is to keep things pretty broad to encourage visibility, rather than granular to encourage specificity. So if we create a sharehousing tag, I think you could expect something to be tagged sharehousing AND co-housing until that parlance becomes more broadly known, and the terms become more commonly differentiated. I think this is a great way to start bringing that difference into more common language.
In short: yes to creating a “sharehousing” tag, with the understanding that you’re likely to still see co-housing used in the same place. Make sense?
Yes, makes sense! And yes, you’re right, it’s pretty broad! But different from co-housing, so that’s why I think it would be valuable if people clicked/searched it.