At WOW House in Seattle, the kitchen is political. Specifically, the fridge, which was long ago dubbed a “socialist refrigerator” by the women who live there. That means any unlabeled food in it belongs to everyone in the house. While claiming ownership over, say, a specific jar of peanut butter isn’t necessarily distasteful, doing it all the time signals you’re not interested in the communal premise of WOW House. One former housemate started putting her name on everything; she didn’t last long.
WOW House—which stands for Wild Older Women—is just one of many communal living arrangements across the US, households where people who aren’t related or romantically involved choose to reside together. But they’re not roommates, emphasizes Davida Wolf, one of the WOW House residents. Their brand of communal living, or coliving, reflects an intentional decision to share a home with others not just because it makes the rent cheaper, but because they want to. Residents share spaces and meals and manage the household collectively. “When you’re living communally,” Wolf says, “everybody has responsibility and power.”
For many, choosing this way of life is a radical answer to larger social issues: food waste, skyrocketing rents and home prices, and what the US surgeon general has dubbed a loneliness epidemic. It’s a way to redefine success in a society in which the conventional idea of “making it” often means living alone or in a small family unit—society’s “big bias on individualism,” as Wolf puts it.
In 1970 a New York Times investigation into the “commune phenomenon” found nearly 2,000 groups living together, “seeking economic advantages, social revolution, love, pot, God, or themselves.” More than 50 years later these setups may look different, but the underlying motivation is the same. For Sony Rane, a 35-year-old who lives with 19 other people in a Chicago housing cooperative, it just doesn’t make sense to live alone: “I get to come home from work to a home-cooked meal everyday. I wash my plate at the end of the night and I’m done.”
Today the Foundation for Intentional Community’s database clocks just over 700 such groupings across the country, which doesn’t include more casual combinations, like multiple couples sharing a house. Gillian Morris, who runs a blog about coliving called Supernuclear and is a cofounder of Casa Chironja in Puerto Rico, has seen a “huge explosion” of people reaching out and asking for advice on how to begin living communally, especially after COVID. During the pandemic, she says, “People were forced to confront how difficult it was to be alone.”
One of the primary motivators for living in these larger groups, members say, is the food. “Communal eating is the beating heart of coliving,” Morris says. She and her housemates in San Juan, along with all 20 members of Bowers House in Chicago, and the wild women of Seattle, invited Bon Appétit to join them in the kitchen. We got a behind-the-scenes look at these households as they planned meals, cooked, and broke bread together at their (sometimes very large) tables.
WOW House
Sure, all four women living at WOW House are technically senior citizens, but their five-bedroom Craftsman home in Seattle’s Capitol Hill is not an old-age home. They are more like a family, says Davida Wolf, who is now 64 and has been there since she was 50. All of the Wild Older Women also identify as lesbians, which is not a formal condition of residence but does make the house an oasis in a political climate that Wolf describes as “kind of scary.”
The cadence of meals is casual and organic: Paulette Hopke, 70, the self-proclaimed house mixologist, housewife, and henkeeper, will often start by asking, “Are we eating American or French?” “American” means each woman eats on her own time, while “French” is a proper sit-down meal in the beautiful dining room. Hopke tends to make elaborate one-woman productions, inspired by what she’s found at the farmers market, while Wolf prefers to cook simply—meatloaf or a chicken soup—and in collaboration with her housemates.
The shopping also finds a natural breakdown: Wolf is in charge of the Costco runs for staples like bulk Kalamata olives and instant noodles, and Hopke goes to the local food co-op. Fresh eggs come from the hens in the backyard. Carol Anderson, the matriarch and the house’s original owner, doesn’t shop or cook, but she buys takeout for Thursday movie nights. The division of labor comes from years of figuring out people’s preferences and an “innate trust that people are going to step up and contribute what they can,” Wolf says. “There’s tremendous underlying generosity.”
- Founded: 1978
- Number of people: 4
- Oldest: 83
- Youngest: 62
- Number of chickens: 4
- Cost per person, per meal: varies
- Founded: 2020
Disposable camera photos taken over one week at WOW House, where Tina the parrot rules the roost and politics is always on the menu.
Casa Chironja
The residents of Casa Chironja live by two golden rules: Always make more, and the cook never cleans. The San Juan complex, which has four apartments of varying sizes, plus communal living spaces, is just blocks from the beach and is home to about six full-timers and a rotating cast of short-term stayers—including a farmer restoring one of Puerto Rico’s oldest coffee plantations and, on occasion, people’s visiting parents. The group skews start-up: Gustavo Díaz-Skoff originally came to the coliving model seeking fellow entrepreneurs, in addition to cheaper rents and pooled resources like a backup generator and cistern.
There is no cook schedule and no formal division of labor. “It’s very spontaneous,” Díaz-Skoff says. Coffee is brewing by 5 a.m., and people are generally on their own for breakfast. By 5 p.m. someone has typically sent out a group text about dinner plans, something along the lines of “I’m making pasta, who’s around?” That’s often Giorgio Pietro Biondetti, who is, by Díaz-Skoff ’s account “always making pasta.” Díaz-Skoff might supplement this with a veal Parmesan, while another housemate makes a salad from the vegetable garden out back. Grocery money—$6 per meal, contributed on an honor system—is pooled via a group-spending app called Mass and is used to keep the house stocked with an abundance of local produce (papaya and fresh passion fruit juice are staples). Any leftover funds may be rolled over to the following month or put toward a group splurge, like a bunch of lobsters for a dinner party.
If it seems surprising that the dishes get done every night without a chore wheel, cofounder Gillian Morris would suggest that your view of communal living needs an update. “There’s this scarcity mindset that comes from the fact that the last time they lived with people was in college and they had a roommate who would use all the milk and not replace it,” she says. Her experience of co-living could not be more different. “I don’t see a tragedy of the commons. I see an insane abundance of the commons.”
- Founded: 2020
- Number of people: 6–8
- Oldest: 38
- Youngest: 28
- Cost per person, per meal: $6
- Types of fruit in the house: 10+
- Biggest dinner party: 40 people
Scenes from a week with Casa Chironja residents, who embrace a relaxed approach to communal living.
Bowers House
Sony Rane wanted to move into Bowers House, an 18-bedroom 19th-century mansion on the South Side of Chicago, for the Vitamix. Then 24, she loved to cook but didn’t make a lot of money, and the prospect of buying her own fancy high-powered blender was out of the question—let alone a stand mixer, which she had only seen on cooking shows. She’s now 35, the 20-person household’s longest tenured member, and doesn’t see herself leaving anytime soon.
In operation for more than 30 years, Bowers House, which is part of the Qumbya Housing Co-op, has gotten the logistics of large-group living down to a science. Each housemate is responsible for one dinner or brunch a month; on their cook day, they cook and clean for the entire household, plus any guests who happen to join—up to 30 people in total. It can take anywhere from 5 to 12 hours, but “then you’re basically done for the rest of the month,” Rane says.
Nalani Stolz, one of the newest members, moved in to be closer to her sister Marijke Wijnen, whose eight-month-old is the house’s youngest resident. Stolz had been living alone and was tired of cooking for herself. In addition to her monthly cook duties, she is in charge of the biweekly Costco run to stock up on things like oils and flours. Other housemates handle bulk orders from WebstaurantStore, an online restaurant supplier, as well as fresh produce runs three times a week. The house is strictly vegetarian—a house seitan recipe makes regular appearances in everything from pierogies to gyros—and there are always vegan and gluten-free options. Dessert is optional, but often there’s a housemate going through a “stress-baking” phase, which means French pastries for all.
- Founded: 2020
- Number of people: 20
- Oldest: 55
- Youngest: 8 months
- Cost per person, per meal: $6.45–$8.57
- Spices in the rack: 63
- Longest-tenured member: 11 years
Pictures taken over one week at Bower’s House, where celebrations are communal and a grocery trip typically costs around $400 dollars.