[HN Gopher] Charter Houses (2022)
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Charter Houses (2022)
Author : alexdong
Score : 63 points
Date : 2023-10-28 18:41 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (slimemoldtimemold.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (slimemoldtimemold.com)
| pjs_ wrote:
| https://www.radicalroutes.org.uk/
| pjs_ wrote:
| Hippies have been doing housing co-ops for a long time, and
| they work kind of like this, and they are mostly (in my
| experience) cool places.
|
| A bunch of people get together and buy a house which they can
| then live in as a community. As time goes on people move in and
| out, and in general these function as very cheap shared housing
| with no landlord and (usually) a flat, non-hierarchical
| structure. There are usually expectations on pitching in to
| maintain and run the house.
|
| Radical Routes is the org that helped out most of the groups
| that I knew: https://www.radicalroutes.org.uk/
|
| Lots of homebrew country wines, asylum seekers in a raised bed
| above the stairs, curry, good parties and messy drama.
|
| Of course you still find the full spectrum of human bad
| behavior in any place like this, but generally my limited
| experience was that these places attract thoughtful, creative,
| slightly weird people and are shining beacons of an alternative
| way of doing things.
|
| To the note in the article about rules, my weak impression was
| that the more systematic, sincere, organized co-ops tended to
| be the ones that survived - hands-off tended to turn rotten
| after a while. There's definitely some sort of alchemy involved
| in making the thing successful.
| semireg wrote:
| e.g. housing cooperatives
|
| https://coophousing.org/
| dmoy wrote:
| Cool general idea, some of the specifics around $$ numbers are a
| bit... off
|
| > Big investments generate quite a lot of money -- you can draw
| off about 4% of an investment every year without depleting the
| principal, because you get back that much or more in interest.
|
| That is not at all what the 4% rule they linked is talking about.
| The 4% rule means, roughly, from the original source, "95% of the
| time you won't completely run out of money in 30 years".
| Indefinite withdrawal from an endowment is a very different
| problem.
| ShamelessC wrote:
| Recently found yourself with more money than you know what to do
| with? Worry not! You can:
|
| - Buy some friends to hang out with you!
|
| - Invest in their future!
|
| - Fuck them!
|
| - Begin to write your own religion!
|
| - Guilt them into being in your religion!
|
| - Fuck them!
|
| Brought to you by [redacted] and friends.
| I_cape_runts wrote:
| Don't forget Tony Hsieh
| ajkjk wrote:
| I don't think this kind of comment belongs on HN, but I do
| agree basically agree with it.
| rexpop wrote:
| A similar sentiment with a different tone is in another
| comment:
|
| > It is hard to differentiate "a nice compassionate living
| situation" from "a mechanism for abusers to build tiny
| empires".
|
| OP could have invested more energy in writing out their
| reasoning, I agree.
| ajkjk wrote:
| That other tone was my comment which I posted to offset
| this one :p
| egypturnash wrote:
| You want rules, trust me you want rules.
|
| I have lived in something really close to this situation - seven
| furries, one four-bedroom house in Seattle's suburbs, one person
| with a high-paying IT job - and it fell apart. And a big part of
| why this fell apart is because we never even talked about things
| like "maybe we should set up a chore rota".
|
| This also sounds a lot like "fraternities" and "sororities",
| which certainly have rules. Or maybe "a commune" depending on how
| far outside of the city is, and those certainly have rules too.
| If you want to actually try to make this happen I would recommend
| looking at rules for those sorts of organizations, and asking
| yourself "what horrible mess happened that lead to this rule
| being enacted", because I can guarantee that somewhere in the
| history of the organization, there was something that happened
| for _every single rule_ that threatened the continuing survival
| of the organization.
| slv77 wrote:
| There is a lot of help and experience in setting up intentional
| communities. A good place to start is https://www.ic.org/.
| Racing0461 wrote:
| What if the 6 others also had high paying it jobs. Outsource
| all non essential tasks ala taskrabbit? Money sounds like the
| issue here.
| civilitty wrote:
| I think money is largely the issue. I lived in several
| different 5-7 bedroom communal houses in SF with a bunch of
| founders/engineers and if everyone (or even half the people)
| have high paying jobs then it's a very different experience.
| The group can easily absorb months of another resident's rent
| if they have volatile income which greatly reduces the
| pressure on relationships.
|
| It only costs a few hundred bucks a week to have cleaners
| come over and take care of the house so most chores are a
| none issue. Dishes and trash were the only rotating chores
| IIRC since those couldn't be put off between weekly
| cleanings. There was a fridge for personal food and a
| separate communal fridge with a group food budget so all
| staples were always taken care of. Internet, insurance,
| water, power, were all split equally. There were no problems
| concerning the money even though some people were messier,
| some ate at home more, some worked from home entirely, etc.
| etc.
|
| That's a far flung situation from the one described in TFA
| though. We lived together to build a community as adults, not
| for survival. That changes the dynamics.
| opportune wrote:
| Not to be a dick but there is a pretty apparent correlation
| between being able to hold down high paying jobs and
| interpersonal/emotional skills as well. Which is not to say
| that all people with low paying jobs are unreasonable
| assholes, nor that all high income people are saints.
|
| But in my experience highly difficult people who complicate
| living situations tend to struggle to keep jobs for the
| same reasons that make them bad roommates.
| ajkjk wrote:
| Well it depends on preferences. I find the idea of paying
| someone to do basic tasks degrading, even though I could in
| principle afford it. So you would need "7 people who have
| similar opinions about the ethics of doing housework".
|
| Related to the reason why I always avoid roommate ads if they
| advertise paying for housecleaning once a month, because I
| can only really imagine living with, um, adults.
|
| (this gripe does not apply to people who are working around
| childcare)
| MuffinFlavored wrote:
| > Even if you did nothing but stick the money in an S&P 500 index
| fund, the historical average is about 10% per year.
|
| * With dividends reinvested, before inflation
|
| Say S&P dividends are always 1.5%
|
| 10% total return - 1.5% dividends (ignoring the quarterly
| compounding aspect for simplity) = 8.5% in equity growth
|
| Say you wouldn't reinvest them because you want cash flow
| equivalent to 4% of your principal
|
| 4% drawdown rule - 1.5% dividend paid out as cash and not
| reinvested = 2.5% drawdown needed
|
| You really only need to pull 2.5% with the 4% rule, no? (0.625% a
| quarter 4 times a year?)
|
| However, inflation is usually 2%, so you need to pull 2.5% + 2% =
| 4.5% every year on top of the 1.5% dividends being paid out to
| you? Is this accurate?
| fbdab103 wrote:
| I think it is more a rule of thumb meant to be simplistic for
| modelling purposes, less a perfectly calculated system. I also
| believe the 4% rule is with the intention of keeping the
| principle _mostly_ intact over 30 years of retirement.
| firedaemon wrote:
| One challenge (among _many_ ) is simply that many areas limit the
| number of unrelated people that can live in a house. When I owned
| a house in a college town in the Midwest many moons ago that
| number was 3, for instance.
|
| (I have heard that this is sometimes aimed at limiting brothels,
| though that sounds a bit like an urban legend?)
| spondylosaurus wrote:
| > Charter houses could solve this problem neatly. A charter house
| or two could easily be set up with positions offered to people
| who are filling these roles, providing them with a minimum of
| support -- at the very least, free rent and free high-speed
| internet. These people are professionals, so this may not be
| enough for them -- but there's no reason they can't get support
| from the charter house and make additional money in other ways.
| They can supplement that support by consulting, getting a real
| job, being a bounty hunter, etc.
|
| Maybe I'm missing something here, but I'm not sold on why this
| charter house arrangement is better (for either side involved)
| than just... paying people a salary.
|
| Certainly it's easier to do regular payroll than to buy a huge
| house and be its landlord (really leaning into the "lord" part)
| and manage its residents' food + housing + transportation +
| healthcare needs. Most of that can be purchased with plain old
| money, and employers can offer insurance to employees without
| having to be their landlord too.
|
| And then on the residents' side... it's bad enough _now_ that I
| 'll have to get a new health insurance policy if I quit my job,
| but if I had to find a new roof over my head, too? The power
| dynamic here doesn't sound great.
|
| Like, in the context of "we want to fund a handful of random
| open-source contributors": if you have the funds to do this
| charter house thing, why not just open an LLC and use it to
| directly pay the people you're trying to support? Why does a
| literal house need to be involved?
| Moto7451 wrote:
| I had a friend try this in upstate New York. The result? One
| ruined friendship and an alienated family member. The property
| was sold and no one ever talks about it. Leaning to the "lord"
| part is precisely right and the eventual "peasant revolt" is
| ugly.
|
| The eventual plan was kinda cool. Offer a vacation destination
| as a digital detox zone for the Digital Nomad set. They knew a
| number of people in that space they could have marketed to. I
| think if they avoided the weird living/working arrangement it
| would have been fine.
| fragmede wrote:
| Someone I knew died in a car crash, but somehow we all keep
| driving cars. Just because your friend's one attempt failed
| terribly doesn't mean the whole idea is rotten. I'm aware of
| a number of successful communities/warehomes that are making
| it work.
| Moto7451 wrote:
| You're taking my one added data point and extrapolating. I
| did not say that communes can't work.
| spondylosaurus wrote:
| "People living together often butt heads" isn't even an
| out-there concept. (It's one reason I and others would
| argue that even communes should have individual living
| quarters--everyone having their own apartment in a shared
| building versus everyone having one room in a sprawling
| mansion. The former can have shared common areas, but the
| latter becomes one giant common area.)
|
| And I'll throw another data point in the pile: I've had
| too many friendships soured by turning friends into
| roommates. In part because we were all immature and bad
| at handling conflict, myself included (ah, college!), and
| in part because there can be people in your life who you
| love and cherish but do _not_ want to share a kitchen
| with. I 'd imagine tensions would have been higher if
| only one of us was paying rent and the others were living
| there for free.
| fragmede wrote:
| Because community. Tossing money over the wall via an LLC
| doesn't automatically do that. There are no shared dinners, no
| impromptu coffee chats, no late night conversations without
| cohabitation.
| spondylosaurus wrote:
| Does buying a home and letting people live in it
| automatically created shared dinners or coffee chats though?
| I can't say I've ever done that with my landlord. And yeah,
| my landlord doesn't usually live _with_ me, but I 've also
| had a fair share of roommate arrangements where we were
| friendly but not exactly friends. Certainly not eating meals
| together.
| mold_time wrote:
| The original question is something like, "what's the minimum
| form of scholarly institution?" If you want to set up a
| nonprofit to support a number of
| researchers/students/intellectuals, it's cheapest to 1)
| purchase housing "in bulk" and 2) buy rather than rent. Hence
| buying a house.
| tpmx wrote:
| Hello, Erlich Bachmann! Damn, you're still alive!
| sdwr wrote:
| Hello, Eric? This is your mother, and you are not my baby
| armatav wrote:
| Yes, 10% per year return "for free" by just investing it all into
| the SP500; except the rate of inflation makes that negative, and
| you've also got to reinvest any return to see this "10%".
|
| The real rate, not the imaginary rate of inflation.
| ajkjk wrote:
| I generally love this idea but, historically, the risk with
| people building private communities that they're in charge of is
| that they may or may not turn out to be abusive tyrants and you
| can't do much about it and probably the abusive tyranny will come
| out thirty years later with a lot of "I told you so"s.
|
| c.f. cults, "dude ranches", "wilderness therapy", foster homes,
| asylums, etc; the list goes on quite a ways. All _in principle_
| good ideas and in practice... probably... sometimes good and
| sometimes really awful.
|
| It is hard to differentiate "a nice compassionate living
| situation" from "a mechanism for abusers to build tiny empires"
| without a lot of regulation and transparency.
| angarg12 wrote:
| One thing OP seems to gloss over is that there is a strong
| correlation between places where people want to live in, property
| prices, and rent prices.
|
| In other words, the places where people pay 1k for renting a room
| are not usually the ones where a 7 bedroom house sells for cheap.
| moffkalast wrote:
| Ok guys which one of you bought the missile silo and what exactly
| are you planning on doing with it?
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(page generated 2023-10-28 23:00 UTC)