Co-Living: the trigger word that needs some explaining

The interweb in New Zealand has been exercised this week by the announcement of The Coh, a development on Auckland city fringes that will house some 22 people in what is billed as co-living.

At its best, co-living is a cool global concept, wrapped around millennial notions of global nomads unhindered by commitment (leases are generally monthly, for less than a year) but keen to build community, quickly.

The Coh co-owner, Ben Spence was inspired by his own shared living experience in San Francisco, but he’s not the first in New Zealand. There’s another Co-Living group in Queenstown, again developed by Kiwis who’d enjoyed that living style overseas. But their properties max out at five bedrooms and a couple of bathrooms, so are more like well-managed flatting situations. In the four The Residence properties around Auckland, tenants get a decent sized en-suite bedroom with a bar fridge, then share communal kitchen and living.

Commentators reacted wildly when they learned that The Coh furnished bedroom spaces are a mere 7 sq m, that bathrooms are shared –although there are promises of communal lounge/kitchen/dining spaces, a movie room and a rumpus room with bar tables.

Victoria University senior lecturer and associate dean of post graduate research at Victoria University’s school of architecture is unimpressed by The Coh’s appropriation of the name – and notion – of cooperative living and housing.

Southcombe leads research in the field – known in academic-speak as housing and collective urban housing ecologies. He led the co-housing hui in February, which hosted international and local experts hoping to develop an open source platform for developing collective urban housing here.

“Places [like The Coh] are the antithesis of community,” he says. “They are developer-led and managed housing masquerading as community or co-housing. They are not community-led.

“In the same way, you wouldn’t describe a student hostel as community-led, they are very much structured by the organisation that controls it. It’s just appropriation of the words.”

Southcombe is not against the concept, pointing to well-known co-living situations in the United States and Europe that have a very significant degree of collaboration and many wrap around services such as co-working. But he’s notes that it is seen as a darling development option at the moment – tiny rooms that can rent for $360 a week, shared bathrooms, community spaces that are easy to install – and agrees that the word has become the housing equivalent of greenwashing.

“It’s just a hostel situation that’s trying to be dressed up as something else.”

Huge global brands mainly, New York and around the Bay Area of San Francisco are in the booming category.

Shared workspace pioneer WeWork are now in the coliving space (as WeLive). Economies of scale are pushing the facilities bigger and bigger: WeLive’s new Seattle space will have over 380 apartments over 23 floors; there’s the 550-person The Collective in London (two sites, a third about to open in Long Island New York) and a startup, Starcity has seven Los Angeles and San Francisco developments, and an 800-unit one approved for downtown San Jose. Chinese real estate giant Vanke’s Port Apartment is rolling out in ten locations with 25 sq m lofts and studios.

The difference for all of these is that rents are generally lower than for studio apartments in the neighbourhood, there are events and community building ‘concierges’, furniture, linen and cleaning are often provided. Naturally there’s free Wi-Fi, photos of appropriately cool and ethnically diverse flat mates chilling or doing yoga on the roof terrace, shared social media sites and philosophies about being the best person you can be.

Now big developers in Australia are playing hard in this space. UKO, a new division of Veriu hotel developers, has a 33-studio development in Sydney with more rolling out across the city, and there are several other start-ups in the wings. The 25 sq m rooms are full of Instagram-worthy designer furniture that rolls and folds and converts to something else.

Even furniture giant Ikea has been researching what people want from co-living (answer: no kids, don’t make me deal with other people’s mess, but not mega-places that inhibit human connection).

Australian developers say they are attracted to the stability and cash flow of these build-to-rent models, with demand likely to grow.

But in New Zealand Colliers national director of residential project marketing, Peter Evans, says that the company’s research has not uncovered any developers of that scale coming to Auckland. He suspects that without deep pockets they’d be working hard to convince banks to cooperate with lending on such new concepts. He adds that the whole world of digital nomads is about location – somewhere sunny, somewhere cool, somewhere Instagram able and full of like-minded people – so that could eventually include Auckland.

Adds Southcombe: “There are a huge range of collective housing models, from clusters of apartments that are close to co-living. But single men’s’ hostel-style places are more the housing of last resort.”