Check these out:
http://www.verdant.net/sharedhousing.htm
"...Seven of us, (two couples and three individuals), live together in what might be considered an ideal living situation. We share a two-story 3000 square foot house in Oakland, California. Our per person cost for living very comfortably is incredibly inexpensive. (Less than $20 per day per person for housing, utilities and food--details below)
There is almost always someone at home so the house is cheery, active and secure. Before we installed our solar panels and solar hot water system, the cost of lighting and heating the home was divided seven ways. (It WAS Less than a dollar per day per person yearly average). Now with the solar set up we are approaching zero cost for electricity. We share a high speed cable modem connection through a local area, plug in and wireles network . (25 cents a day per person).
Potential areas of conflict, such as the use of the three bathrooms and large kitchen, are minimized because of differing schedules and a well coordinated routine that allows everyone privacy-yet utilizes the house and its contents to the maximum. The large kitchen has been converted into the communal living room since that's where everybody hangs out anyway. It has a large round table of oak planks, sofas and comfortable chairs. The floor is rugged hardwood planks on one end and bare structural plywood at the other-now waxed-that was revealed when the linoleum and old carpet was ripped up. The old "living room" is now a comfortable private living area and study for one couple.
In addition to the kitchen living area, there are private alcoves throughout the house and in various areas of the garden where one can just get away and be alone.
Sustainability
Built in the late 1950s the structure, like most American homes, embodies a tremendous amount of lumber, concrete and natural resources. The even minimal level of gas heat, lights, water and other resources required to make the house comfortable and keep the garden alive would be wasted with just one couple or even one family living alone in the house. (Situations that existed for 45 years) . However, with seven people and their guests now enjoying the house everything is used to the maximum and costs are divided seven ways.
For example, the kitchen with its heavy duty range and high quality fixtures, all bought used from a restaurant supply house, is utilized almost non- stop throughout the day. It helps to heat the house in winter and there is the ever-present smell of baking and cooking. There is almost always a fire burning in the kitchen fireplace fueled by free construction wood or tree branches that people pick up. The large garden is worked by all who enjoy it and produces a substantial amount of produce. All seven people, or even more, could if they so chose, live from what the garden produces. See our Grow your own food page...."
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=41&ItemID=9885
"...Greensboro, N.C./ On Aug. 1, 2002, I left behind the comfortably roomy semicircle marked "married-couple household" on the Census Bureau pie chart and slipped into an inconspicuous wedge labeled "two or more people, nonfamily." Having separated from my husband of 28 years the day before, I opened our three-bedroom 1927 Colonial Revival house to a group of men and women less than half my age. Overnight, the home I had lived in for 12 years became a seven-person anarchist collective, run by consensus and fueled by punk music, curse-studded conversation and food scavenged from Dumpsters.
Thoreau famously said that he had "traveled much in Concord." I would venture to say that I've traveled just as much, and maybe more, without ever leaving my house.
It happened like this: My husband and I had come to the end of the line, as married people sometimes do. We had helped each other into adulthood and careers (Bill is a high school English teacher; I'm a freelance writer). We had raised two daughters together, but with Isabell and Margaret grown and both of us entering our 50's, it was clear that our hopes and goals for the next couple of decades were diverging.
Bill longed for quiet and solitude; I wanted noise and movement. To complicate matters, I had become the court advocate for Justin, a 15-year-old runaway from a foster home who had been in and out of juvenile detention ..."
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