Co-living in London: Friendship, fines and frustration | Hacker News Reader

Co-living in London: Friendship, fines and frustration

bbc.co.uk

97 pointsKeres97 comments

I lived at The Collective. Horrible, horrible place.

The price is ridiculous for a small cage in a crappy industrial area. Facilities are so-so, everything is made to a very low standard. For the same price you can get _so_ much better close to the city centre.

When I lived there the place was infested by young people doing tons of drugs and partying in the common areas. It was well known that several dealers lived in the building but as the staff were also massive cokeheads nothing ever happened.

To fill up the building The Collective housed people on placement through the government. That resulted in some interesting personalities. For example a guy who beat his girlfriend to blood in front of their kid and dragged her out by her hair through the reception.

The general manager was however fired when he, coked off his head, used his masterkey to enter a girls room in the middle of the night to 'talk'.

UBER also had their driver HQ on the ground floor when I was there which resulted in a lot of catcalling and weird behaviour from angry drivers in the reception.

> When I lived there the place was infested by young people doing tons of drugs and partying in the common areas

The impression I get is that these are living arrangements for people who enjoyed shared accommodation at university and would quite like to continue it. Not so much living without loneliness, but continuing and/or maximising their youthful capacity to live as they'd like. I don't necessarily have a problem with that if it doesn't impinge on others, although it feels a bit like they're just paying to shortcut access to a hedonistic theme park rather than making their own way. It might be a stretch to say this, but there's something slightly Westworld about it.

For sure. I was initially attracted by the idea of living with creativea/entrepreneurs with a similar mindset.

What I found was mostly late twenties/early thirties "entrepreneurs" and "consultants" that in reality had achieved very little. To make up for their lack of achievement they adopt a holier-than-thou attitude and talk a lot about how they have escaped hamster-wheel society and are now living as nomads and free-spirits, most likely subsidised by mom and dad.

Amusing to observe but annoying to live with.

@vrbelli I would love to read your "Top 10 List of Improvements" if you were able to re-build "The Collective" from scratch. I have no connection to "The Collective" I'm just curious how it could be "fixed".

Not really sure. I think in many ways it's a pipe dream. Without a shared purpose I think it's impossible to foster a real "community".

@vrbelli that's super insightful/useful! A sense of "shared purpose" is really difficult to create and impossible to "impose" (or worse "buy"!) I got the feeling (just from visiting "The Collective") that none of the people who designed/built the place had any intention of living there themselves ... It looked both "glossy" and "sterile" at the same time!

Do you think it would be better if there were fewer people like 50 instead of 500?

What about if existing residents got to "filter" the new "applicants"?

What are your thoughts on having an enforceable "code of conduct" to set the standard for interaction? (like some tech conferences and software projects have...)

It's quite an interesting question. I agree it's impossible to impose, maybe even to create.

On university campus and in companies it's a natural occurence. You can have good or bad company culture but there will definitely be a company culture - which seems to be the problem at places like this. There simply isn't a culture.

The size is definitely part of the problem, 500 is way too many. On the other hand I also know people who share house with four other people but have no relation with them.

There was/is a code of conduct and lots of events at The Collective that tries to bond people together. Some people made friends and had their own little group they hung out with but it seemed like most went to a few events and then stopped going.

I might be pessimistic but I think it all comes down to a shared purpose - which you can't enforce unless people work, study or are obsessed with the same religion/politics/whatever.

And yes - it's definitely not designed by people who would eer live there.

There's nothing "pessimistic" about thinking that a "shared purpose" is required. (I couldn't agree more!)

There's a reason Simon Sinek's "Start with Why" (clearly define the purpose of your organisation before the product) is the 3rd most popular Ted Talk (of all time ...) https://www.ted.com/playlists/171/the_most_popular_talks_of_...

If the purpose is clearly defined, it should be obvious to everyone without any "marketing" required.

Are you lucky enough to work for an organisation that has a clear purpose? (I ask because v. few people do ...)

This sounds shockingly similar to a lot of 1st year student dorm blocks I've been in around the country

My entire time in the UK I've lived in flatshares - out of sheer necessity due to the ridiculous rent prices. This "co-living" space is no exception in that respect. Only somehow they manage to spin it as "hip" to live in a shoebox for 1000£ a month. This is just making money off of the dire housing situation, imho, by squeezing the maximum amount of people into a building.

It's probably fine for short term tennants who just need a place to sleep after work ("bedsits" that are being offered in the city are at least as expensive).

Now, mind you, having lived in flatshares for over 12 years, I've grown to hate it with a passion, so maybe I'm totally wrong here (doubt it).

I actually stayed in this building (Collective Old Oak) briefly a couple of years ago while I was waiting to move into a new flat.

It's pretty awful, to be honest. I was aware of the small room size and didn't mind that too much. The real problem is that the building seems very cheaply constructed. Poorly ventilated, no air conditioning, and very noisy due to cheap (non-acoustic) glazing units that don't seem to seal properly, and non-existent soundproofing between rooms.

It's also a rather scummy part of London with tons of traffic, noisy industrial neighbours, and generally run-down, heavily littered environs (but I did enjoy riding my bike down the adjacent canal towpath route into central London!). In a decade or so this might improve as the area is planned to be redeveloped with the HS2 interchange station etc.

On the other hand, there were some genuinely interesting people and events going on at the time I was there. They did seem to have succeeded in creating a nice community feel.

But if people are really paying £1000/month for a room here, they're being ripped off! There is much better quality accommodation, in better neighbourhoods, available for that sort of money.

Having to share a flat in London was a good 50% of the reason for me moving to Madrid. Wanting to live in your own home is not so much to ask.

Sadly, this seems to be a trend in many other places too - even in Madrid itself it's not that realistic to live alone if you are young and on a local wage.

Back in 2003 I managed to find a tiny bedsit, with a shower in one corner, sink + countertop oven in another, and bed in the third. It was a shared toilet, and cost half my take home wage.

I couldn't afford a proper 1 bed studio for £800 (with a separate bathroom), nor could I afford to commute on tube (I found one 35 minute walk from work), but it did the job.

I couldn't abide living in a house share, however somewhere that's effectively a hall of residence, with a kettle and microwave in my room, would be far more preferably than a house share.

18 months after my salary had increased enough that I could afford a 1 bed flat in Twyford and the commuting cost (cheap car, free parking due to shift work, 7 days a fortnight), which was great

My mortgage in 2018 on a 4 bed house in Cheshire is less than I paid for the rent on that flat in Twyford in 2004.

Well, in Valencia you can still rent a 1 bed for around 500 euro in the centre or a 3 bed for 700 euro near a metro station. Madrid and Barcelona are another story though.

Same here. I realized I needed a big pay rise to continue living in London, given what living alone costs. With the other 50% of my reasons, I ended up moving to Copenhagen.

The choice in London seems to be between a tiny, grotty apartment within 45 minutes of the centre, or something a bit nicer but also further out. Friends with the former had no money left to go out. Friends with the latter couldn't be bothered to travel the longer distance to come out.

It’s helpful to live with a significant other. Splitting rent for an outrageous 1-bedroom in a big city is basically the only option...

Shout out to Madrid. Lived there for 5 years, loved it. Very under appreciated city.

Indeed. There are many other options for social living without compromising on the space aspect. Condo living is one. You get your own kitchen (albeit small), a small bedroom, a small living room and your own shower and toilet.

Then there are several amenities: Pool, Gym, Library. In the Condo you can find a coffee shop, 7/11, etc... So you can be either social, or not. But if you pick "I socialize with my condo tenants", you still have the option at 8PM to sneak to your apartment at xx Floor and have your own moments.

>This is just making money off of the dire housing situation, imho, by squeezing the maximum amount of people into a building.

Could you clarify? As opposed to landlords in other cities, who house people out of the kindness of their hearts? I’m just not sure what the argument you’re making really is.

No, it's just that the market is more realistic elsewhere. No one is squeezing 12 people into a 3-bed flat in Newcastle, because there are no people who want to live in such conditions in Newcastle - £300 a month gets you a private room with all utilities and council tax included. But if in London people pay £1000+ for just one room or similar amounts to share, then suddenly it becomes a much more lucrative market.

I realize that most landlords consider themselves as doing a service but sometimes they don't seem much different from domain squatters. It's not really a service, what would happen if they didn't exist? Everyone only buys homes for living in as needed, drastically lower prices, more innovation based businesses that actually contribute to making the world a better place?

Think about where homes come from, about how do you ever move if you have to find a buyer to live in your old flat to sell it, and where do people who can't afford to buy a house live.

So if you can't afford or don't want to buy a place, you shouldn't have a roof over your head?

We had a decent council housing system in the UK which provided affordable rents. That and housing cooperatives/housing associations replacing landlords would be ideal.

I agree with the person you're replying to, the vast majority of landlords don't contribute anything to society and the idea that housing is an investment should be stopped.

I was a landlord -- I bought a flat in 2007, the day later Northern Rock went bust, and 6 months later the identical flat below mine sold for 60% of the total -- I was in £60k negative equity. Fortunately I resisted the mortgage sales guy and went for a tracker, so paid very little in mortgage (The interest part was about £150pcm).

Fast forward 5 years, still £30k of negative equity, however SWMBO is pregnant so we need to move. Rented out our place, rented somewhere near Manchester, moved, then told my boss at the time I'd moved.

Over the next 4 years we rented out, and between various repairs, service charges, etc made an average £500 a year profit, patently not worth the stress - especially if the tenants had moved out. My half of the £500 a year was taxed in the final year at 60%.

So all that's left to make it 'worth' buying a house is the increase in house price, which in England has averaged about 3% pa over the last 13 years.

If you want to form a housing cooperative, nobody will stop you. If you want to live in the centre of London you're going to be spending a lot of money though - it's supply and demand. If you want to rent or buy somewhere cheap, move further away, plenty of choice to buy a house for under £100k, in some really nice places, not far from Manchester or Leeds. Don't blame the landlords though.

You’re thinking in the context of the status quo, you would be able to afford it. If you don’t want to there are friends, family, hotels. This is a hypothetical of course but I’m just posing the question of what would happen if the people who own 1000 homes (all to themselves) didn’t exist. This is only half the issue anyway, the major problem is supply constraint and I'm not going to get into that :-)

Germany seems to be doing way better.

Flatshares ("WG" , Wohngemeinschaft) are extremely common in Germany. For anyone under 30 living in a major city it is absolutely normal to share a flat with 1-3 other people.

For students a flatshare is normal but all Germans I know that work full-time live in their own flat. In London, living on your own after university is basically impossible (unless you live very far out).

> In London, living on your own after university is basically impossible (unless you live very far out).

Disagree, since I'm doing it right now 3 years after uni.

I'm not paid amazingly, below average salary for London but above average for the rest of the UK. However half my paycheck goes on rent. My commute is about 45 minutes by tube or 20 minutes by motorbike so it's not too far out. The trick is to find an area that's stabby enough to be cheap but hipster enough that there's decent bars in the area to help you forget. However I definitely got lucky, my rent is a few hundred pounds below market value.

"A few hundred pounds below market value" makes a huge, huge difference.

If your salary is around £30,000, you'll take home around £1,900 a month after tax and student loan payments. Spending 50% on rent is already huge, spending £300 more (66%) would be madness.

Agreed: I've just looked around and it's closer to £100-200 cheaper per month, but it's hard to compare when you factor in anything more than just number of bedrooms and rough square footage. I did find out I'm paying about £100 a month more than the estimated payments on a 30 year mortgage which seems cheaper than most. I'm in the £40k range which makes it slightly less significant but not by too much.

Either way there's not a huge amount of choice in London. I had to find a room in a flatshare a few years ago and I struggled to find anything under £700 which was remotely reasonable (ie double bed, room for a desk and some floor space).

Can you fill in some actual numbers and a location here? Because that seems just atypical from this description.

Quite reluctant to give actual figures so these are fudged. Salary of £45k, rent £1.2k/month, edge of zone 2/3, tube line within one minute walk, overground and another line quite close. Can't remember what area it is and I'm god awful at estimating area but I'd say the flat is about 500sqft?

Can't give location, sorry. I've doxxed too many people before on less information.

£45k is an enormous salary, especially for someone in their 20s. 85% of the country earn less than that.

Looking at median London salaries from 2015 (which I have to hand), and assuming a 10% increase on that, you earn more than average for all but two boroughs - Tower Hamlets (i.e. docklands) and the City

[1] http://www.itv.com/news/london/2015-11-19/how-does-your-sala...

You've said elsewhere that you're in the 40k range. Median Central London Salary is ~35k, so you're actually well above average salary, even in London.

> However half my paycheck goes on rent. My commute is about 45 minutes by tube or 20 minutes by motorbike so it's not too far out.

I don't know how you manages your finances but for me anything above 25% of your income going for rent is absurd. And you are not making it up in distance, either. 45 minutes by tube is a lots of time. (I assume motorbike is not a favorable option given London weather).

My choice is between living close to work, living alone, or cheap rent. I can pick two. All three if I choose to live in a room which fits no more than a single bed.

I'm counting 45 minutes tube/20 minutes motorbike as close because for London that's honestly quite good. About half of the people I know have commutes over an hour each way, at least one above two hours, and I can cut my public transport commute to 35 minutes if I time everything right. Biking is actually the favourable option but not possible if I'm drinking, and the miserable weather doesn't bother me.

I would love to cut my rent down to 25% of income but it's honestly not possible without increasing travel costs and time. Plus I work in computer security, London is one ofthe few places in the UK with any job mobility in my field.

25% for rent in London means you'll have a lot of money to spend. If you spend 25% of your salary of $2000 on rent on the countryside you'll live off $1500. If in the city you can make $5000 but spend 50%, you'll still have more, even after higher other costs in the city. Sounds like an extreme example but in the UK, London vs. countryside further North has those differences.

Here's one big difference: it's also common in London for people over 30.

Which in other European capitals is an age where you would more likely live with your partner and start a family, rather than live like a student.

That is because it's less focused on one city so that demand is a bit better distributed. Zoning law is also more helpful than in London, where laws prevent from building on one of the numerous golf courses in the city.

I have no interest at all in golf, but I'd like London to keep the green space it has.

London just needs to build taller. It happens, but very slowly. Middle class British people don't like anything other than houses, so compared to any German city there are very few 4-6 story apartment blocks in London.

The green belt is not about green spaces. Only 10-20% of the protected spaces are actually parks or forests. Much is unused land or agriculture. No one wants to get rid of Hampstead Heath or Richmond Park.

> The only co-living options in the UK are currently in London

The only places branded with this buzzword, certainly. There are many, many people sharing a house with other people they don't otherwise know. And, of course, student accommodation. I wonder how much these rooms (which the article says were built for students) were actually going to cost for the students that would have lived there before it was bought and "rebranded".

The other place £2800 a month for a flat share is insane though - I live 20 minute on the train from Waterloo station, and that price will rent you a 1300sqft three-bedroom house. I guess it must be exponentially increasing as you get closer in.

For my entire career (I'm a lifelong Londoner) I've been bemused by newcomers to the city who essentially refuse to even consider living beyond zone 2. I grew up on the border of Z3/4 and now live in Z6, but have worked either in zone 1 or beyond it (in travel terms) since late 1996. My gut feeling is that the horrific prices in the centre are very much tied to what seems to be a perception that the outskirts suck.

I knew a woman in her 50s in London that was commuting daily 6 hours from one of the outskirts to another outskirt on the opposite side for a low-paying SWEng job. Frankly, why do people even bother moving to London/UK? Unless you are a finance person, a money-laudering crook from abroad or a top-school PhD in a hot field, your prospects are slim.

Given their age and the commute I can imagine the company was in the city center, which was an ideal commute. Then, later, relocated to the city outskirts, an unideal commute. If she owns her home she may not want to move and sell.

> Unless you are a finance person, a money-laudering crook from abroad or a top-school PhD in a hot field

That's a very accurate description of London.

There's almost 9 million people here, y'know.

Well the sensible option there would be to move which outskirt you work nearest? If she was going from outskirt to outskirt, why not like, go and live on the outskirt she was working in?

Luckily there's a lot of tech work is in or close to the East (Shoreditch, City), so I can live in the South East.

If I had to commute to west, I'd probably look to move to the outskirts on the west.

Unless you have a mortgage in one of those opposite outskirts and can't afford to switch...

Rent it out then?

I'm from Scotland but moved to London a few years ago for work. I very much have that perception. Like many people from other parts of the UK I moved to London for the excitement. I wouldn't want to live in Zone 1 but there's plenty of places in Zone 2/3 which are lively and fun to live in.

Maybe I just don't know the best places in Zone 6, but my perception is that they feel like small towns which just happen to be on a tube line, if you're lucky. Even in zone 3 it's a lot more suburban than where I used to live in Glasgow.

If one day I have to move to Zone 6 because it's cheaper, then I'd much rather move to somewhere like Glasgow or Manchester, live centrally with more space, and for cheaper still.

An outsider coming to London and not living in the centre needs to deal with the cognitive dissonance that they would actually be materially better off and generally happier in Manchester or Newcastle or Edinburgh.

Lots of people who would have no problem accepting the fact that a house in, say, a beautiful coastal location is a luxury can't seem to accept that a central location in certain cities may be as well. SF/SV are something of an outlier in that there's very little that isn't very expensive within a reasonable distance. But many of the prime real estate cities have outlying areas that are reasonably priced.

I love living next to the M25, but the unreliability of trains sucks the joy out of certain things. Zone 6 (on the tube) might be manageable though.

Contracting in SWE is lucrative.

Alright, so Collective privatised what used to be a student dorm, decreasing affordable housing to students, and now offers a bed in crammed rooms with other people for at least 1000GBP/month. For some reason this is considered a good deal (for Collective I guess?)... Is this the prosperous future?

I've had a look round this place. It's definitely not a good deal. The core concept is a good idea, but this particular building is just the worst execution of it.

Also it never opened as a student dorm, I think that's what the architects had in mind, but The Collective opened it as a co-living building from the start.

Is that actually what happened? Or did the student accommodation close down for its own reasons, and Collective jumped on the opportunity and bought it?

I'm unsure - but I didn't read anything in the article to draw the same conclusion you did.

This is just depressing. A lot of the people here can get a remote job for perhaps 10% less income, move to somewhere cheap but with great internet and spend 50% less housing/food and leisure.

My internet connection in Brazil is 10x better than what I had in London. My apartment is at least 3x bigger and 100x nicer. Food is awesome, people are nice, weather is lovely and if you're not acting like a dumb gringo, it's pretty safe too if London's latest murder spree hasn't convinced you yet.

> it's pretty safe too if London's latest murder spree hasn't convinced you yet

The London murder rate is projected to be 180 this year, about 2 per 100k

Rio's murder rate is 18 per 100k - about 10 times worse than London.

That statistic in skewed because most of the murders happen in the favelas within drug gangs. City areas are ripe with petty crime but murder is perhaps as widely seen as London.

Plus... it's not infested with security cameras.

> That statistic in skewed because most of the murders happen in the favelas within drug gangs

But that (with “favela” replaced with he appropriate local term for underclass neighborhoods) is true pretty much every city everywhere.

> City areas are ripe with petty crime but murder is perhaps as widely seen as London.

Yes, but “if you exclude our underclass neighborhoods, our murder rate is the same as City X including it's underclass neighborhoods” is not making the argument you seem to think it is.

Some cities are dangerous in the posh neighbourhoods -- I wouldn't want to live in Johannesburg, where things like this [1] happen

Not something that happens in London, or New York, or St Louis or even Rio and Sao Paulo.

[1] http://www.eutimes.net/2012/07/south-african-family-dies-in-...

On the other hand London's figures are skewed by gangs. If you remove the 15-25 year olds that hang out with gang members, the murder rate is far lower.

I'm Brazilian living in London. You're absolutely right that houses in Brazil are much bigger and cheaper than in London. But you say that Brazil is pretty safe too? Really depends on the city. I feel much safer here in London than in Sao Paulo

I'm a Londoner living in Sao Paulo for a year now. I haven't had any security issues whatsoever for now. I do however follow the Brazilian common sense rules of keeping one safe when going out.

Three grand a month for a cage! You can almost rent six 3 bedroom semi-detached houses for that where I am! (~150 miles north of London). Sublet or rent with others if you need the company

Don't embrace the cage, embrace remote working

I live just outside of London. A 30min direct train to most of the major London stations. I have a three bed detached house with a few acres of land and I'm paying a fraction of what they are charging for a glorified bedsit.

Yeah I'd imagine it's similar in many places outside of London really, I just gave the 150 miles north for context

Crazy the amount people are paying.. earning too. I think the earning shock for me is having it in my head small housing is for students and entry level jobs though

£2,200 for a 4 bed semi detached in SE19 (Crystal Palace) which has Overground and National Rail https://www.openrent.co.uk/property-to-rent/london/4-bed-sem...

The area has loads of bars and pubs and restaurants and shops and a beautiful park and is green and friendly and it's piss easy to get up to central.

The people in this article are doing it wrong.

A lot of people (me included) hate remote working

Enough to live in one of these co-cupboards though?

It's not necessary to live here. No one has to live here. As has been discussed there are far better options in central London with more space for the same price.

Well I was responding with a context of my comment "work remotely over living in these boxes" and had the response "I don't like working remotely"

Other comment chains (that didn't exist in the comments at the time I posted my comment!) have indeed pointed out there are other options that keep you in the London area

Where's the HN-preferred route to finding good remote jobs?

Sorry remote comes up so frequently on HN I wouldn't know where to start as a comment

There was a recent discussion here on where to find a remote job https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16875868

I've stayed at Roam in Miami, London, and Bali. I was at the London location as the same time as the author of the linked article, and am currently at the tail-end of a three week stay in their Miami property.

I think to compare the pricing to a long-term lease, or the facilities to a luxury hotel, is to miss the point. The biggest value proposition is in having a community of like-minded people from the moment you walk through the door. I've never met so many friendly, diverse, interesting people as I have each time I've stayed with them.

I sold my home in San Francisco at the beginning of 2015 and have been a full-time nomad since then, staying mostly in hotels. I am 10X more social and more productive when I stay at Roam. Being in a city where you don't know anyone, and aren't a native-speaker of the language, can be very lonely. Having to track down laptop-friendly coffee shops, or commute to co-working spaces, or hunt restaurants for lunch and dinner, can consume a ridiculous percentage of your day. Roam completely solves these issues by facilitating a community, providing great co-working spaces, and having a well-stocked commercial kitchen.

Is it more expensive than living on your own? Not compared to SF or NY (or zone 1 in London, where the old London property was). And not compared to a hotel.

Is it as nice as a 5-star hotel? Nope (at least none of the rooms in which I stayed). But I'd rather walk out the door of my room and be invited to drinks with friends, than waved at by a bellhop.

£1,000 to nearly £3,000 a month

fuuuuuuuuuuuuckin ell

Even by London prices that's utterly absurd, you can get an entire one bed flat for yourself for £1000 and I don't even mean having to move far out I'm talking walking distance of shoreditch.

Wouldn't wish flatsharing """co-living""" on anyone, what a nightmare.

LOL

Flatshares are completely normal in many UK cities and they are marketed directly as Student Houses in places like Cambridge. Rightmove even has a special checkbox for them.

I've never heard it called "co-living" however.

Flatshares are completely normal for students but those co-living spaces aim at people with several years of work experience who still can't afford their own flat in a reasonable location.

Strikes me that it's just a rebranding of flatshares for people who consider themselves too old and too professional to be living out a Peep Show esque post-university existence.

Japan shows an interesting contrast to the UK housing market. In Japan there are many small single occupancy apartments. I rent one right in the middle of a large city for around 300GBP per month. Sharing is almost non-existant outside of families.

Recently however, so called "share houses" have started popping up. They are usually centered around an idea: "English language immersion house", "pet lovers house". You pay a small premium for extra services related to the house.

It seems that most people choose to live alone, and London's house shares are just caused by the economics of the situation.

I'm so glad I don't live in London any more.

When I did, last decade, I paid in the range of £300-700 a month for a flat or a house I shared with friends. We always had decent sized rooms, a good kitchen etc

A grand a month to live in a room smaller than the Travelodge is just awful.

Now I live on the South coast, I work in London sometimes when the money is right, I work in Dorset, Hampshire, West Sussex and Surrey otherwise.

In the city I live in (Southampton) you can rent a 3 bedroom house for £850 pcm. You might even be able to buy a place to live eventually.

Life is so much better.

This is absurd.

I live in Soho (Zone 1, as central/touristy as it gets), with my partner + 1 housemate.

We pay £2400, split £1400/£1000. The flat is nice too (fresh renovation, not an ex-council flat).

This is a dystopia to me.

£1000pm for that is crazy. I did flat shares ranging from £440pm in Stoke Newington. I imagine the going rate might have climbed to £650pm, but this is just bonkers.

Indeed, this should not be portrayed as a competitive rate really, it's just the price of super convenience.

It's not even priced for convenience. It's not in a well-connected area, and you can get basically any other flatshare with all bills included for equal or less price.

These sound utterly bleak and awful. If you want to live in a collective space, just go into a house-share, you can find a nice enough room for £600-800/month. Or if you go further from the centre, you can rent flats etc. I pay £1,000/mo for a single bed with small garden 3 mins walk from Crystal Palace station (though I did get very lucky). My commute is a perfectly pleasant 40 mins to Shoreditch.

The problem is that people seem to want to live right in the centre, whereas if you're on a reliable public transport route (and TfL is fairly reliable). Knowing what areas are awful and which ones are lovely is nice, too.

If you move down towards Greenwich, Sydenham, Peckham, Deptford, New Cross etc there's much better options in much nicer areas, and if you're happy living places with good transport links that are shittier in general you could hit up Stratford, Mile End etc.

Zone 3 seems to be a sweet spot. Then it's £160(ish)/month to get pretty much anywhere by transport.

Having lived in London for 10 years and shared most of that time I can see the appeal of Co-living for the community aspect. The reason many people (but clearly not all, judging from the comments in this thread!) find "The Collective" to be "value for money" is because it "includes" so many amenities such as "Cinema", Gym & Co-working space. When these are factored in, £1000/month is "not bad" for London. It's obviously a grossly over-priced outside of London in the same way that £7 for "Avocado & Eggs on Toast" seems "reasonable" in Shoreditch (London) but "absurd" anywhere outside of the Capital!

Having (personally) visited "The Collective" recently I felt they were trying to "force" the community aspect and were more interested in "ticking boxes" with their facilities than actually making them great. For example the "Library" had very few decent books (lost of empty shelves) and was more of an "interior design" magazine picture than an actual useable space.

The author of the (BBC) Article (Winnie Agbonlahor) is clearly not the "target market" for the co-living value proposition, however she finishes her article noting that: "In a different phase of my life - definitely."

And I have to agree 100%; if I were "young and single" it would be a great way to meet and socialise with like-minded people.

It's good there are different options, but this would be very unpalatable for me. The "anonymity" of these big spaces leads to very anti social behaviour in my experience. Luckily in 10 years in London I never shared with more than 1 other person and now own my flat.

I absolutely adore the concept of co-living, it's especially great for people who have moved cities or countries and don't have an established group of friends.

When I moved cities for work after university, I moved into a long term backpackers hostel. I ended up living there for a year, until I actually moved again and moved overseas. Sure, sharing a room with 3 other people wan't great, but it was amazing to live in this building with all these other (mostly) awesome people. It was a long term hostel, so most people were there for 3-6 months, so there was a lot of churn, but it wasn't like I had to make a new group of friends every day. There was no financial necessity for me to live in a hostel, I could more than afford to move into an apartment, but I just didn't want to.

Because of living there for so long, I now have friends all over the globe.

I now live in an sharehouse with 3 other people, and I really miss living in a hostel. I miss the dumb shit we'd get up to. I miss the massive shared dinners with 15 people. The thing that I miss the most though is that there was always something to do and someone to do it with. Even at 3 in the morning, there would be someone in the lounge to hang out with. Living in a shared house (where my housemates are very quiet), I feel massively understimulated.

Obviously co-living isn't for everyone, but I think that there are a lot of people who would really benefit from it. I find it hard enough living with only a couple of people, I couldn't possibly imagine living on my own. I guess I like coworking spaces for the same reason, as bad as they are for productivity, I really miss working in a coworking space now that I work in a small office with ~10 other people. In a coworking space of 200 people there's always someone that shares your interests and there's a different relationship between co-workingspacers and colleagues. We used to have a daily quiz at the coworking space, and a group of us would do the crossword, there was also a group who'd go to the gym together, and even a motorbike riding group.

There's a great TED talk on cohousing [1], which is a similar concept, but based more around having several families living in self contained apartments, but with a lot of shared space and activities. To me, that is the ideal kind of living situation, everyone has their personal space, as well as having communal space and activities. I've been living in my current house for 6 months, and the only reason I've even met one of my neighbours is that I accidentally stole their fridge.

I think that as people become more and more mobile, moving cities and even countries more often, it's important that we have these opportunities for socializing and meeting other people. It's seriously hard to meet people in a new city or country. With more people working remotely as well, loneliness is a growing issue.

[1] https://www.ted.com/talks/grace_kim_how_cohousing_can_make_u...

IMHO this co-living model is the same as squatting, of course excluding the legal issues.

really glad I live in the suburbs in Texas.. mortgage on new construction 300m^2 is $2000/mo, my commute is 25 minutes and my salary higher than Londoners..

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