The State and Future of Community Houses
There’s something special about living together with a group of interesting, ambitious, and curious individuals. For many, this may bring back fond memories of their time in college. But in this case, we’re talking about the recent upsurge in community living. Community houses (CH) aren’t new. They were around pre-covid: Hack Lodge, Recurse Center, the Archive, and many more. They’ve given rise to awesome projects/companies, such as Fractal Computers.
While digital communities are essential, working together in person has certain salient qualities that the digital realm can never replicate. Living together with others gives ideas space to breathe and develop. It generates trust, compassion, and understanding, and allows people to put the best and most complete version of themselves forward.
While we’ve all been feeling the impacts of a remote lifestyle, it gives us an opportunity to re-imagine the role of physical communities in our life. In the following sections, we’ll explore how some have begun to imagine these community living spaces and what the future might hold for them.
Landscape
To best illustrate the state of CHs and where they’re heading, let’s quickly break down the different types of CHs out there today:
Co-living Spaces
Co-living spaces aim to create a supportive environment for cool people to work and live in. Many are focused around a specific industry/demographic but residents do not share a common goal or project. They often hold resident-organized events such as demo nights, guest speakers, or community dinners.
Examples of this type of house include Tribe, GrokHome, The Rainbow Mansion, The Archive, and more.
Maker/Hacker Houses
Maker houses, hence the name, gather together a group of (usually tech or tech-adjacent) builders for a short-term (few months) to ship products.
Examples of this type of house include Maker Manor, Launch House, and more.
Other Houses
Hack Lodge and Recurse Center are examples of spaces that are focused on providing an inclusive environment for accelerated learning.
Creator houses such as Sway House and OfflineTV gather together content creators and are full-fledged businesses, running multiple brands under them and building massive audiences.
Team houses ran by esports organizations have also been around for a while, and focus both on creating content and allowing their players to practice and form close relationships.
What is perhaps not abundantly clear from looking at the categorization of these houses is the work that is involved in organizing them. There are significant barriers in place that make starting, or evening joining, one of these houses a daunting pursuit in and of itself.
Our Experience:
From personal experience setting up CHs and from the many conversations we’ve had with other organizers, there are numerous hurdles that exist behind the public-facing facade.
House
First, finding a house that can affordably and comfortably fit 10–30 people for 2–4 months is challenging. Most accommodations of this size are either not meant for an extended stay or are prohibitively expensive for the average person. Even more, they aren’t optimized for communal living and work. A house that sleeps 20 is distinctly different than a house that sleeps 20 AND has enough room for collaborative work, focused study, conference calls, and the other many activities of a busy cohort of people. Finally, convincing a renter to let you use their residence for your CH (when it often be for family or corporate retreats) is an unexpected hurdle we’ve confronted far too many times.
Finding the right place that suits these many variables can be a full-time job in itself, and many whom we’ve spoken with spent hundreds of hours talking to hundreds of homeowners before converging on a semi-optimal space.
People
Second, sourcing great people is a daunting task. If you have a large social following, you can get the word out and reach people that meet your criteria. But even then, if you want to curate a cohesive cohort, rather than a bunch of disjointed individuals, it will require time spent: I can personally guarantee that you will be doomed to long hours of outreach, application review, phone interviews, and emails.
On the same front, while your first and second-degree relationships may serve you well, bringing together a new, diverse, and multi-faceted group will require a level of reach most frankly don’t have access to. Sure it may be fun to live in a house with your friends, but part of the appeal is meeting new minds and forging new friendships. Sourcing people is hard and, again, time-intensive.
Logistics
Finally, organizing a CH is a logistical and managerial nightmare. Here is just a small list of some of the considerations and tasks you’ll encounter:
- Creating community guidelines, COVID policies
- Gathering and paying rent, security deposits
- Being in charge of house upkeep, communal chores, enforcing policies, security, damages, food, rules, etc…
- Coordinating the arrival and departure of people
- Organizing orientation and bonding activities
- Designing and implementing activities and events (hackathons, demo days, fireside chats, and more)
- Late exits and last-minute changes
The point here: creating a house is no casual side project. To do it right, even with access to a template from others or with prior experience, is a full-time undertaking.
So, where does this leave us…
Well, what we propose is twofold.
First off, we want to take on the brunt of the housing, people, and logistical nightmares that today function as a barrier to more houses coming to fruition.
Secondly, we are pioneering a model of community living (not outlined above) with the specific aim of solving society’s biggest problems.
Focused, multi-disciplinary houses for solving the world’s biggest problems.
Other CHs have done a lot that we admire:
- Bringing a group of curious, project-driven, and intelligent people together
- Creating a fun environment and with ample social events
- Shipping tools and products at a really high velocity
We want to preserve the serendipity and benefits of these houses while also:
- Bringing together a diverse group of people across various sectors (ex: engineers, entrepreneurs, writers, policy-people, etc.) / with representation from all relevant stakeholders
- Aiming to solve a key problem of our time (this will be the house’s mission/focus)
- Today’s problems are complex — they require the expertise and collaborative attention of inter-disciplinary operators if we hope to meaningfully address them.
We believe that focused CHs are the key to solving the biggest problems that will shape the coming decades. Problems like misinformation, AI ethics, democracy, and others that are far-reaching and complex but critically important to future generations. By centralizing the ambition of multi-disciplinary experts and stakeholders, we can collectively and collaboratively advance our shared values.
So what then is Parallel?
Parallel builds community houses to solve big problems.
We optimize communal living situations, source crazy talented people, and manage all the behind-the-scenes. Most importantly, each house is intentionally designed so as to yield brilliant outcomes — both for the problem area and the house members. We’ll create curricula, bring in experts for intimate conversations, and curate the resources necessary for success, whether that be funding or partners.
The future of community houses, and what’s next for us
We believe that the future of community living is bright. In the next few years…
- CHs will be easier to organize
- CHs will be further democratized and accessible to those across industries and interests
- The physical structure of CHs will be intentionally designed
- CHs will focus more on intimacy, meaning, and value creation than hype.
- CHs will be at the very center of solving some of humanity’s most pressing problems
We’re looking to pioneer our first house in the fall of 2021. Please fill out the Typeform below if you’re interested in joining (or helping us run) a focused community house, or if you’re simply interested in where we’re going:
We’d love to hear any feedback you have on the concept and are all ears to topics or problem areas you would like to see us address — feel free to DM any one of us on Twitter:
Benjamin Laufer, @benjlaufer, benjlaufer@gmail.com
Ryan Ouyang, @RyanOuyang_, contact@ryanouyang.com
Website: tinyurl.com/parallelhouse
Thank you for reading, and let's change the world together — one house at a time 🚀
