Slashdot Mirror
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.
In order to do that, they would have to get jobs first...
They used to have adult dorms very similar to what's described...state mental hospitals. :-)
Seriously. I somehow doubt this catching on. Every Millenial portrait I've seen/heard/read is a caricature...I have seen very few people who fit what are cemented as unshakable models of the generation. Outside of San Francisco hipster startup culture, I doubt anyone actually wants to live in a college dorm past their early 20s. I graduated in the 90s, so I was just before the generation that had all sorts of crazy dorm amenities like private bedrooms...my brother who is 6 years younger than I got to experience apartment style living.
Just because people grow up with Facebook, Instagram and Twitter doesn't make them all narcissistic social butterflies. It seems to me that if someone actually wanted this kind of experience, they could choose to live in a densely populated urban core and talk to their neighbors more often.
Excuse me? A room full of people staring at their phones is "social" now? I'm old? ( turned 30 in june )
21 microunits, each packed with a tiny kitchen, bathroom, bedroom, and living space into 300-square-feet
I don't get it... Why are they calling 300 square feet "microunits"? Sounds like a relatively normal size to me... Of course, I live in midtown Manhattan, so for $2,200 a month my wife and I get a 350 square foot place in a building with 20 of them (though I think unit 1D, by the stairwell might be smaller). We have a nice kitchen...
I don't think this is a bad idea at all, but when I moved out of the dorm one thing I actually missed was the cafeteria and meal plan.
I remember disliking the food a lot, but although I ate better living in an apartment, eating better was a burden in terms of shopping, cooking, times where food got tossed because plans and schedules change, etc. I actually found myself missing the sheer convenience of food service. Even though I didn't always love what the hot choices were and opted for yet another salad and sandwich bar sandwich, all I had to do was show up.
The shared area around the rooms would be interesting (I remember the common areas being popular), but I would worry it would be too noisy and chaotic. They'd have to do something clever with architecture and flow to make it so that individual rooms remained quiet.
Obligatory xkcd.
To summarise: it is a well known fact that those people who most want to live that way are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it. To summarise the summary: anyone who is able of getting such a room should on no account be allowed to do so. To summarise the summary of the summary: people are a problem.
Fight for your bitcoins!
Why can't they create their own jobs by finding what people want, making it, and selling it to them?
That appears to be exactly what Troy Evans, real estate developer, is doing.
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
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.
>> What millenials REALLY want is affordable practical realistic proper housing
And we gave it to you via the housing crash and the lowest mortgage rates in history.
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.
Why are they calling 300 square feet "microunits"?
Because such an apartment is smaller than the smallest single-family dwellings that some city building codes allow. This has forced some supporters of the small house movement to mount a house on wheels to avoid regulations that apply only to permanent structures.
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.
If cable, internet, and utilities are included then it becomes a much more reasonable price
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.
The first generation? People in their 40's are being called "the lost generation" - squeezed between the pollution/debt/war/recession created by the boomers, and narcissist demands of millennials.
>> It doesn't help the millenials who don't.
I'm not sure I'm following you. In many places, prices of "starter" housing dropped by around 50% from the mid-2000's to now. Right now, you can buy your choice of 2-bedroom homes for about $70K where I live - $90K if you want to live on the water. And the financing required to get these homes is cheaper than ever. A $100K mortgage at current rates is less than $500/month. And jobs are plentiful as long as you don't have some kind of useless liberal arts degree. Right now, you could find multiple companies within a half hour drive that would started a guy like me out of college between $50-60K.
It's actually middle-aged folks who took it in the shorts with the housing crisis because we had already locked in mortgages at a higher value and experienced a loss of home value, effectively locking many of us in our current location (where before we could easily flip and move) and putting a lot of people "under water" (Google that) so they couldn't refinance with the lower rates.
Seriously, millennials are getting a lot of crap (just like every generation) for their lifestyle. Much of the caricature is the result of their rational reaction to an insecure life. Most folks in general would love to have a steady job and to own a home. Once you start expecting to have to change jobs every 6-18 months when your startup flops, or you get downsized out of your corporate one, you start looking at the whole world as temporary. Throw in low wages for the younger set, and even steady work doesn't let you live terribly well. Having a 5 year loan on a car becomes a huge liability if you have to make ends meet on unemployment, rather than just a monthly expense if you have a decent salary and some decent job security.
The son of one of our good friends falls into the hipster camp (young, gay, lived in San Francisco, worries about fashion too much, uses words I've never head before), and he and his new husband still want the same thing everyone else wants, a secure roof over their head. It cost them $500k for a 1 bed, 1 bath in Oakland to make it happen. So these kids are still going through huge hoops to get their crumb of the American Dream (I mean Oakland, really?!). I see no "entitlement" complex, just people trying to live in a world that has changed a lot from when I was their age and starting out.
A major draw of the bay area is that unlike many other places, it is very easy to get another job when your company inevitably spits you out on the street. In smaller towns the corporate pressure to cut costs is just as strong, but the chances of picking up another job without ripping up your life and moving are vastly diminished. Here in Portland we get a lot of California transplants who move once they have enough years of experience to be able to get a decently secure job in an area where they can actually afford a house. Just people making rational decisions in a pretty irrational world.
It's reverse psychology. Whatever Russia does, the West needs to do the opposite. Coming soon: Lada's in the USA!
Co-op living have been around for a long time. Maybe they're trying to give it a more mainstream or upmarket image, but it's not really new.
Oblig...
My neighbor knocked on my door at 2:30 am? You believe that? 2:30 in the morning!
Lucky for him I was still up playing my drums.
As a GenXer, I hate both Baby Boomers and Millennials..
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)
Actually, if they were anything like me, a whole lot of people told them to take the loans. I was smart enough to choose a well-paying field but when I finished school the situation for me wasn't as rosy as everyone encouraging me to take loans along the way had said it would be. When I was using loans, everyone was saying CS grads were being stolen from the school before they could even get degrees. If you take loans you can get through and have better opportunities on the other end. (Dot com bubble by the way.) However, even outside my field, there was plenty of pressure for my friends to take loans and make it up on the back end over working and possibly never finishing.
Because nobody has money that they could sell to? That's the whole reason the economy is in the dump it is.
Just people wanting something doesn't sell jack. If you want to sell, the demand side needs money.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
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.
"Nobody told them to take on those loans." Are you mental? The school, the government, financial "aid," the guidance counselors, parents, corporations requiring a 4 year degree to make photocopies. And al though oftentimes community college is good enough, when there's an abundance of desperate University grads from name brand schools, corporations get their pick. Who do you think they're going to choose, Harvard grad or Bumfuck CC grad?
Your flippant attitude reflects your ignorance of the job situation for young adults. I have a bachelor's in accounting, a master's in tax, a CPA license, and a 3.9 GPA. Guess how long it took to get my first entry level job? 2 years from 2009 to 2011. I can only imagine it to be infinitely worse for people without a professional degree and license.
The concept sounds similar to the terrafoam welfare dorms from Marshall Brain's Manna:
http://marshallbrain.com/manna...
At least this building would have individual bathrooms, and the building's small enough that there are windows for everyone...
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
It strikes me that creating a community without your "fatal flaw", that is, with the ability for the group to throw person(s) X out of their living space, is a lifestyle end game that will magnify political correctness, mommyism, retribution, and groupthink to their maximum level of imposition.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
College dorms run pretty well but there is a good reason why. Any problems in a dorm can bring down the wrath of Khan upon you. Getting tossed out of college without any refund or even a willingness to credit you for past semesters can come to roost in your gut over a single problem. A thrown punch meant expulsion. In some colleges one beer was enough to get you expelled even if you had that beer at home on New Year's Eve. A dorm run with a lower level of control may not work at all. And by the way $800 a month rent is far too nasty anywhere for any dwelling.
They are basically renting 300 sq-ft apartments with a nice common room. All the rest is bullshit.
How it will work will depend entirely on the rent price.
They are trying to push some "interesting" concept, but in the end it doesn't matter. What matter are the basics : price, size, location, ...
If it's anything like me, it will happen to you multiple times in the next 50-60 years.
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
in the future, everyone is broke so we have to huddle together in ghettos known as dormitories
Remember kids, if you're not paying for the service, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT THAT IS BEING SOLD.
Whatever it's called, all I know is that my generation was the best, all those before were out of touch, and all those after don't deserve it.
I think my father, grand father, great grand father and every generation before him had the exact same opinion...