“a street with a lot of rationalists living on it” (no rationalist-friendly entity controls all those houses and it’s easy for minor fluctuations to wreck the intentional community thing)
Has anyone tried this? While it doesn’t give a very integrated solution, it seems very easy to do. Why do you say that it is vulnerable to minor fluctuations? Having separate units on the same street seems quite robust to me.
I and friends have, but pretty newly; there are currently two houses two doors apart, and more friends in the process of moving into a third three doors down. I have found this good so far, and expect to continue to for now, though i agree it might be unstable long term. As an aside, there is something nice about being able to wander down the street and visit one’s neighbors, that all living in one house doesn’t capture.
I mean that if someone moves out, the landlord is likely to choose a nonrationalist to rent the place, and that streets seldom have many houses available all at once for a coordinated move.
My current landlord has allowed our friends to apply to other places on our lot before they are put on the market, and has also agreed to rent to people in our friend group and below-market rates. I think landlords do get value from tenants encouraging their friends to move in, because they can be expected to be similar quality tenants and make each other less likely to leave.
It might depend on the market, but I live up the street from a three-apartment building that was occupied by a co-op for a long time. The co-op residents enforced stuff like not messing up the house, and because lots of people wanted to live in the co-op the landlord never had to worry about vacancies.
Assuming the landlord likes the initial group of tenants, having a group of tenants who will pre-vet new tenants and will find those tenants themselves should be very appealing.
This would require patience and risk-tolerance on the part of the initial group, if they’re renting apartments or buying houses in an area where they hope more will become available but don’t know when (and don’t know that their friends will still want to join them when space is available.)
In my experience this has been less of a problem than you might expect: our landlord likes us because we are reasonable and friendly and only destroy parts of the house when we want to make renovations with our own money and so on. So they would prefer more of us to many other candidates. And since we would also prefer they have more of us, we can make sure our landlord and more of us are in contact.
Has anyone tried this? While it doesn’t give a very integrated solution, it seems very easy to do. Why do you say that it is vulnerable to minor fluctuations? Having separate units on the same street seems quite robust to me.
I and friends have, but pretty newly; there are currently two houses two doors apart, and more friends in the process of moving into a third three doors down. I have found this good so far, and expect to continue to for now, though i agree it might be unstable long term. As an aside, there is something nice about being able to wander down the street and visit one’s neighbors, that all living in one house doesn’t capture.
I mean that if someone moves out, the landlord is likely to choose a nonrationalist to rent the place, and that streets seldom have many houses available all at once for a coordinated move.
My current landlord has allowed our friends to apply to other places on our lot before they are put on the market, and has also agreed to rent to people in our friend group and below-market rates. I think landlords do get value from tenants encouraging their friends to move in, because they can be expected to be similar quality tenants and make each other less likely to leave.
It might depend on the market, but I live up the street from a three-apartment building that was occupied by a co-op for a long time. The co-op residents enforced stuff like not messing up the house, and because lots of people wanted to live in the co-op the landlord never had to worry about vacancies.
Assuming the landlord likes the initial group of tenants, having a group of tenants who will pre-vet new tenants and will find those tenants themselves should be very appealing.
This would require patience and risk-tolerance on the part of the initial group, if they’re renting apartments or buying houses in an area where they hope more will become available but don’t know when (and don’t know that their friends will still want to join them when space is available.)
In my experience this has been less of a problem than you might expect: our landlord likes us because we are reasonable and friendly and only destroy parts of the house when we want to make renovations with our own money and so on. So they would prefer more of us to many other candidates. And since we would also prefer they have more of us, we can make sure our landlord and more of us are in contact.