Finding the right fit

Understanding the non-negotiables: money, guests, and succession

Jun 05, 2024

Fun (?) fact: Before we started writing Supernuclear together, Phil rejected me from his first coliving house.

When he and his wife Kristen were first setting up RGB, I applied to be a roommate. They told me I wasn’t a good fit.

I was bummed, even though they gave me a perfectly good reason. In the interview process, I had told them about my plans to be bicoastal, splitting time with Gramercy House, my communal home in New York. I was building my startup and frequently traveling for meetings. I floated the idea that it would be nice to sublet my room when I knew I’d be away for extended periods.

They said they were looking to start the community with people who were highly present and who planned to be actively engaged in building RGB day-to-day.

What Phil and Kristen knew and I hadn’t yet realized is how important it is to live with people who want the same things in their home. You and your housemates don’t have to agree on everything, but there are a few things that matter a lot more than others.

People say when you’re choosing a life partner you need to make sure you’re aligned on money, sex, and kids. Everything else you can figure out as you go along.

When you’re figuring out who to live with, you want to make sure you’re aligned on money, guests, and succession. Everything else is negotiable.

There is no right way to set up your community home. We’ve seen homes on every side of this spectrum - from extreme savers to big spenders, from ‘mi casa es tu casa’ open door policies to zero guests, from communes of itinerant digital nomads to full time nesters - and we think there’s a place for everyone. Just not the same place.

Whether you’re joining a house or forming a house, we recommend talking through the below to make sure you’re on the same page before you sign a lease or take on a mortgage together.

Money

You can have a beautiful, life-giving community no matter how much money you have. I’ve visited a commune in Costa Rica that lives off the land and a mansion owned by billionaires with ten housemates in the Bay Area. Both have a lot going for them.

But you have to agree on *how* you spend however much money you have. You don’t have to envision every scenario but you should agree on basic principles (not rules) to guide your money-spending decisions. Some common sources of disagreement:

How much help do you hire? Would you rather pay a cleaner, or split chores between housemates? Do you hire an accountant or rely on someone to do the bookkeeping out of the goodness of their heart (and if they fall behind, who picks up the slack?). If a housemate has a highly valuable skill - electrician, lawyer - that you would otherwise have to hire out, should the house pay them for their services? How do you feel about housemates paying other housemates to do chores they don’t want to do?
How do you split expenses? At the community living wisdom exchange last December, I co-led a workshop on communal finances. One exercise was figuring out in a small group how housemates would split the cost of a new refrigerator. Some groups chose to split costs equally. Others agreed on a cost sharing agreement that reflected each housemate’s net worth, with those who had more resources expected to pay a greater percentage of the costs. This felt unfair to some: “why should I have to pay more because I’ve saved more money and accumulated more resources?” Again, there’s no right way to do this, you just have to make sure everyone in your group is aligned.
How nice do you want things in the house to be? In Phil’s post on co-buying with friends, he suggests establishing how fancy you want things to be on the Yelp dollar sign scale - are you $ (craigslist/street finds), $$ (IKEA−ish), $$$ (West Elm-ish) or $$$$ (high end designer)? The danger comes when people invest in nicer stuff without checking in with the rest of the house, then expect everyone to split the cost. For this reason we urge having a defined amount that people can spend from the communal budget without getting buy-in.

Guests

One of the big misconceptions we often hear about communal living revolves around guests. People visit one home that has an open door policy and conclude they could never live with the level of unpredictability and ‘extrovert time’ that comes with the fact that strangers (even if they’re friends of friends) might be in your space.

Many people want their home to be a sanctuary: a quiet, peaceful place where they won’t be surprised by anything when they walk in the door. You can absolutely have this in a community home IF all residents are aligned with this vision. Some of the longest lasting and most harmonious communal homes we’ve seen consist of a small tight knit group of people who live together for years.

On the other hand, many people are drawn to communal living by the prospect of meeting friends-of-friends and having a wider social network. They aren’t always going to be in the mood to socialize, and know they can always go to their room if they want privacy, but are happy to see an impromptu dinner party coming together and join if they feel like it.

Hosting takes energy and resources. Hopefully your guests are conscientious, but they may not do their dishes, they probably won’t know how to properly take out the trash, and they didn’t chip in to buy the cleaning supplies you’ll need to use after hosting an event. Is that worth it because you got to host people in your cool space and meet new friends? You decide!

Succession

This brings us to the final foundational issue on which your community should be aligned: how to find new roommates.

It’s hard, and unlikely, to find multiple people who are all ready to sign a lease of equal length at the same time, so most communal homes end up with room openings on the regular. If each person stays for an average of 2 years, and you have 10 rooms in your house, you will need to find a new roommate every ~2.4 months.

How you choose new roommates has a big impact on your culture. This isn’t just a guest who is at your house for a single event. They’re someone you might run into when getting your midnight cereal. You’re going to have to teach them where to find the spare light bulbs and all the other tiny quirks that come up in a home.

Some houses are laissez-faire about this and trust the outgoing roommate to find someone. Other houses will want to have full screening meetings to assess any potential roommate.

You’d be surprised how often people disagree on what is appropriate here. Outgoing roommates can feel like the room is ‘theirs’ to pass on, and might be eager to get out of their lease. The greater community might want to do different things with the room and/or wait to find the perfect new housemate.

Unlike our takes on money and guests, we do think there’s a better and worse way to do this. The outgoing roommate is not going to be around to experience the consequences of any new roommate decision. We think this should be up to the community - and that clear norms should be established on how long the community has to find someone, so an outgoing roommate is not saddled with a lease indefinitely. Many communities we’ve spoken to require consensus of all housemates for new permanent residents (usually with looser requirements for shorter term sublets).

The safest thing to agree on is a longer notice period (we suggest 60-90 days) to allow time to find a great new housemate.

In conclusion

I have a noble history of being rejected by a lot of places, only to discover that the one that finally lets me in is in fact the perfect fit. - Renee Fleming

When things didn’t work out with RGB, I kept looking for a communal home in the Bay Area. I ended up living on a solarpunk cargo ship with people who shared my appetite for a more flexible open door policy and traveled often. It was a glorious period of time with crew-mates who have become some of my closest lifelong friends (and one slightly intimidating sea lion). And I got to enjoy going to dinner parties at RGB and watching Phil and Kristen start Radish.

Our pet sea lion hogging all the deck space.

At Supernuclear we believe that community living is for (almost) everyone. If you’re scared to try communal living, or are rejected from a house, or have had a bad experience, it’s not because communal living isn’t for you - it’s likely because you were looking at a place that wasn’t quite aligned.

And who knows, the person who you didn’t live with could end up being a good friend and beloved co-author :)

Supernuclear