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Dorms For Grownups: a Solution For Lonely Millennials?
HughPickens.com writes: Alana Semuels writes in The Atlantic that Millennials want the chance to be alone in their own bedrooms, bathrooms, and kitchens, but they also want to be social and never lonely.That's why real estate developer Troy Evans is starting construction on a new space in Syracuse called Commonspace that he envisions as a dorm for Millennials. It will feature 21 microunits, each packed with a tiny kitchen, bathroom, bedroom, and living space into 300-square-feet. The microunits surround shared common areas including a chef's kitchen, a game room, and a TV room. "We're trying to combine an affordable apartment with this community style of living, rather than living by yourself in a one-bedroom in the suburbs," says Evans. The apartments will be fully furnished to appeal to potential residents who don't own much (the units will have very limited storage space). The bedrooms are built into the big windows of the office building—one window per unit—and the rest of the apartment can be traversed in three big leaps. The units will cost between $700 and $900 a month. "If your normal rent is $1,500, we're coming in way under that," says John Talarico. "You can spend that money elsewhere, living, not just sustaining."
Co-living has also gained traction in a Brooklyn apartment building that creates a networking and social community for its residents and where prospective residents answer probing questions like "What are your passions?" and "Tell us your story (Excite us!)." If accepted, tenants live in what the company's promotional materials describe as a "highly curated community of like-minded individuals." Millennials are staying single longer than previous generations have, creating a glut of people still living on their own in apartments, rather than marrying and buying homes. But the generation is also notoriously social, having been raised on the Internet and the constant communication it provides. This is a generation that has grown accustomed to college campuses with climbing walls, infinity pools, and of course, their own bathrooms. Commonspace gives these Milliennials the benefits of living with roommates—they can save money and stay up late watching Gilmore Girls—with the privacy and style an entitled generation might expect. "It's the best of both worlds," says Michelle Kingman. "You have roommates, but they're not roommates."
Co-living has also gained traction in a Brooklyn apartment building that creates a networking and social community for its residents and where prospective residents answer probing questions like "What are your passions?" and "Tell us your story (Excite us!)." If accepted, tenants live in what the company's promotional materials describe as a "highly curated community of like-minded individuals." Millennials are staying single longer than previous generations have, creating a glut of people still living on their own in apartments, rather than marrying and buying homes. But the generation is also notoriously social, having been raised on the Internet and the constant communication it provides. This is a generation that has grown accustomed to college campuses with climbing walls, infinity pools, and of course, their own bathrooms. Commonspace gives these Milliennials the benefits of living with roommates—they can save money and stay up late watching Gilmore Girls—with the privacy and style an entitled generation might expect. "It's the best of both worlds," says Michelle Kingman. "You have roommates, but they're not roommates."
There will be a few people that will completely ruin the shared living space for everyone, and if there's no one to police it, the whole place will go to hell.
So like assisted living for old people.
These sorts of projects either go *really* well. Or *really really* badly. It just depends on who owns everything, who is responsible for fixing/cleaning, and what sort of people you get in there.
So if you get a bunch of people who are really into 'lets fix everything' and 'here let me help you do that' you may do OK. If you get a bunch of slack ass jerk offs it will end badly.
Someone will apply, get rejected, and sue, because they were turned down due to age, income level, number of children, political affiliation, type of job - or any of the other hundred reasons to sue for housing discrimination.
"Highly curated" is just another term for "we don't want your smelly kind here, peasant!"
Called an apartment complex. If the corporate owner slapped on a coat of exterior paint, added new landscaping and jacked up the rents, it's called an luxury apartment complex. An apartment complex next door to a college university isn't that far removed from a dorm.
Excuse me? A room full of people staring at their phones is "social" now? I'm old? ( turned 30 in june )
The problem with this idea is that people will be fine with it for a year or two post-graduation, but it's going to start to suck fairly quickly after that.
It's not unusual for people to cling to elements of their student life after they graduate and get their first jobs. I did the same myself; moved into a shared house with a few people I'd known at university and tried to keep a student-ish lifestyle running alongside a full-time job.
It lasted 18 months. Then I gave up and rented a place on my own.
The demands of being a full member of the workforce are very different to the demands of being a student. When you're having to get up at a set time every morning (and generally pretty early), find yourself getting older and needing a regular sleep-pattern, needing a quiet space to do work that actually matters (rather than essentially being for your own benefit, as your work as a student was) and so on, the whole shared-living thing breaks down pretty rapidly. Irritations about your cohabitees different body-clocks, cooking smells, personal hygiene and expectations of reasonable noise levels all start to feel much more important than they did when you were still studying. And as you get more and more irritated with them, they are getting more and more irritated with you.
On top of that, this is generally the time when many people are going to be getting into more lasting romantic relationships, which might eventually lead to marriage and kids. This is not easy when you're sharing accommodation with a bunch of other people and personal space is a scarce commodity.
I guess they might make this work as a commercial proposition if it's a short-term rental affair. The problem is that if you get longer-term residents who age significantly past the incomers, this is going to turn into a vision of hell pretty fast.
What this certainly isn't is an alternative to providing sufficient quantities of decent quality new housing suitable for long-term occupation and family life. That's what we're very short of here in the UK. The issue here for Millennials is that whether or not they want to live like this, they may well have no choice. The option of renting my own place that was open to me more than a dozen years ago (let alone buying one, as I later did) is a lot less accessible now, due to rising rents.
Reminds me more of "Brave New World". Mustapha Mond would be proud; we're working ourselves into exactly the population that Huxley describe:
- "[T]hey also want to be social and never lonely" (Very nearly a direct quote from the book) ...and the comments here are filled with examples of the sexual angle...
- "Millennials are staying single longer than previous generations" (No more moms and dads...)
Of course, the quotes from the article are, like, that guy's opinion man, but I'm assuming he's done the research enough to see that those are at least somewhat accurate assertions.
Between Orwell and Huxley, I think Huxley was more accurate.
Assuming that their baby boomer parents bothered to leave anything for them. Millenials might be the first generation in a long time to get the shaft by their departing parents.
A highly curated community of like minded individuals sounds like the opposite of diversity. Or maybe they'll have a few tokens allowed in so they can point with pride to their open-minded brand of like mindedness.
Co-ops or "Cooperative Houses" like this have existed forever, and they're still very common now.
That depends on the zoning code in effect where you live.
but of course Millennials have to re-invent everything under a new name so they feel like it's theirs and only theirs.
Or they may have to find a way to legally distinguish a slightly tweaked idea from an older idea prohibited by existing zoning codes.
Err, no one told them to take on those loans. Local community colleges can do the same task for a whole lot less, and trade schools or apprenticeships are even better at keeping costs low (with a much faster ROI).
I can't really bring myself to feel pity for something that most people walked into willingly and with open eyes. After all, adulthood (and the responsibilities thereof) has to start at some point...
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Maybe you asked to be born, I haven't.
As a parent myself, I expect NOTHING from my children in terms of help. Not now, not ever. They don't have to do shit for me. They have to grow, develop, live a happy life and I won't take it against them if they leave me to rot in a ditch when they won't need me anymore. I'd just go quietly into the night.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
Don't. Love them for their flaws.
You're sitting in between the boomers that leave the workforce, freeing up a lot of jobs, and Millennials that come with an air of entitlement that no employers wants to touch them with a ten foot pole if he can at all avoid it.
Call it what you want, but I call it job security.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Yeah, nobody but their peers, parents, teachers, high-school guidance counselors, college financial aid office, and the Federal government.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz