This archive report was first published on 22 October 2021.
Imagine a place where neighbors become like family, where chores are shared with a smile, and meals are cooked together with love. This is the essence of co-housing, a lifestyle that's gaining popularity in the United States.
As I walked through Eastern Village, a co-housing community in [location not specified], I was struck by the sense of community that pervaded every corner of the complex. From the shared kitchen to the children's playroom, every space was designed to foster connection and collaboration.
But co-housing is not just about sharing spaces; it's also about sharing responsibilities. In Eastern Village, residents are expected to sign up for maintenance and cleanup days, and many communities pay for formal day care. This not only takes a load off individual families but also creates a sense of mutual support and care.
Of course, no co-housing community is perfect, and Eastern Village is no exception. The shared kitchen, for instance, is not set up to cook community-wide dinners, thanks to a costly commercial range that was deemed too expensive. But as my mother used to say, 'the perfect is the enemy of the good.' We have to make do if we want to make change.
Today, the detached single-family house dominates the American landscape, but it didn't have to be this way. As of 2019, there were about 100 million single-family homes in the United States, compared to about 40 million multifamily ones. But visionaries like Frederick Law Olmsted and feminist activists like Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Melusina Fay Peirce saw opportunities for a less atomized, more female-friendly lifestyle.
These pioneers envisioned co-housing communities like Eastern Village, where women could make money through cooperative housekeeping and share the burden of domestic chores. As Peirce put it, 'cooperative housekeeping' was a way for women to earn a living while also creating a sense of community and mutual support.
