Roomates for Life?

When I first graduated from college, my father suggested that rather than renting an apartment in the East Village neighborhood of Manhattan, where I desperately wanted to live, I should get together a group of seven or eight friends and buy a small house in an outer borough. That way, instead of wasting money on rent, we could make an investment together that would increase in value over time. All of the expenses for the house would be shared—food, electricity, cable, and Internet—and we would have the additional benefit of being able to split the work required to upkeep our home.

“You’re crazy, Dad,” I remember telling him. To begin with, I had barely saved enough money to pay my Fresh Direct bill, let alone a portion of a down payment on a house. And I wanted to have that single, independent girl experience in New York that pervaded popular culture in television shows like Sex in the City.

After suffering through a year of mice, noise, and non-stop houseguests looking to mooch off of my ideally-situated-for-partying apartment on St. Mark’s Place in the East Village, I moved out to Brooklyn, to a tiny, dollhouse-sized place on the top of a brownstone in Prospect Heights. The apartment was barely large enough for a bed and a couch, but it was my own, and I loved it. Moving in, I finally felt like I had made it in New York.

But as soon as the glamour of single habitation had worn off —the shopping at antique stores for the perfect desk, the discovery of the prettiest glassware in the world that I found at a flea market, the first dinner party where I invited over my closest friends—I found that I was frequently lonely in my cozy little perch. It wasn’t that I didn’t love the apartment, it was just that I missed having the comfort of knowing that someone I loved was just a few feet down the hall.

For most of my life, I had been in the constant presence of other people. Growing up, I was the oldest of six children—one biological sister, two biological brothers, and two sisters, much younger, who were adopted from South Korea. We lived in a large house that was constantly filled with other people—twelve aunts and uncles, over twenty first cousins, and of course, all of our friends. At any given time, there were up to fifteen people living somewhere on my parent’s property, all of them contributing to keeping our living space lively, clean, and full of happiness.

In many ways, our home was much like that of the Lee’s, a family recently profiled in a New York Times article, “Three Generations Under One Roof,” by Sarah Kramer. Twelve years ago, the Lee family decided to consolidate the living space of their entire extended family under one roof. They bought a building in Chinatown with over 10,000 square feet of living space, and moved everyone in together—the 86-year-old patriarch of the family, his children, and their children after them. Together, they share food, they clean their living spaces, and they do laundry. The bottom three floors are divided into individual living spaces, and the top floor is a communal play room for all of the kids. On the roof, there are grills for the barbecues that the family throws in the summertime.

By creating a community within the heart of New York city, the Lee family is not only able to be together, they are also able to split the financial burden of living in New York, which is one of the most expensive cities in the world. They have created an almost feudal living space that shields them from the loneliness and difficulties that many single people in New York—like me—are faced with on a daily basis.

Recently, my sister moved back to my parent’s house in Westchester. After five years of living in a small studio on the Upper East Side, she needed a break. Constantly taking care of herself, along with working a high-pressured job, had proven to be too much of a burden. Although she doesn’t plan on living at home forever, she’s been finding that being within our family structure again is comforting. For the first time in many years, she doesn’t feel overwhelmed by life.

In her controversial cover article in November’s issue of The Atlantic, “All the Single Ladies,” writer Kate Bollick suggests that as a woman, having a “room of one’s own” in a community of like-minded women might be a solution to alleviate some of the pressure of having to get married. As women find it more and more difficult to find equal mates, marriage rates are declining, but that doesn’t mean, Bollick argues, that women need to resign themselves to living alone for the rest of their lives. Instead, she states, they can find comfort in each other’s company, and perhaps even create better living environments for raising children. In the article, she quotes Christopher Ryan, a co-author of Sex at Dawn, as stating: “In every society where women have power—whether humans or primates—the key is female bonding.”

This power can be consolidated, and used to create communities where women don’t need to do it all alone—careers, living, raising children—but can share the emotional, and physical burden of living a balanced life. I eventually want to get married, but I find a lot of comfort in knowing that there are less traditional options in case I discover that marriage is not right for me.

For more on how the economy influences living decisions, read: Early Cohabitation: Practical or Financially Dangerous?