#SharedLiving The Ingredients for a Hosted Home
What is shared living? Share a living space with people who have common ideas, ambitions, and interests. In a high-tech, low-touch world, the shared-living movement is helping to create great connections and opportunities amid the hustle and grind of city living.
As the SharedLiving movement rolls forward, and we look for ways to bring the flexibility and personal connectivity that Generation Mobility requires, we are preparing to scale-out our own innovation that we call the Hosted Home.
By now, many will have heard of CoLiving. This is effectively the CoWorking of the housing market, enabling people to live together in complexes with large common spaces and small rooms, much as you would rent a desk in a larger office space. Billions have been invested, as the likes of WeLive, The Collective, Common and others compete to be the global leader in the space.
Not everybody wants this to be the unilateral vision around CoLiving, or as we like to call it SharedLiving. The industrialization of housing can work for some, but others enjoy the intimacy and customization of a Home. Space10 did a global study (more than 7,000 participants from 147 countries) earlier in the year to study what people do want:
“…the survey revealed that people were most interested in living in shared houses of between 4 and 10 people. That’s really small–and not something that today’s coliving companies offer.” OneSharedHouse2030
To create this type of product requires some creativity and innovation because of the business model and economies of scale that the current CoLiving model relies on. Our Hosted Home model is built on top our software, which:
- enables anyone to add their Home to our platform, with multiple rooms, and professional photos to accentuate the home’s features
- creates an environment for Guests to contact Hosts AND Hosts to contact Guests, enabling people to find the types of Guests that they would ideally want living in their home
- requires personal verification (not just an automated ID check) for both Hosts and Guests, creating more safety and trust in the environment
“Sharing some space with strangers is becoming a more acceptable paradigm for city dwellers looking for connection.” Co.Design
Our software product is the architecture for the Hosted Home, now let’s look at the ingredients.
Ingredients For The HostedHome
A Host (or Ambassador):
Our current Hosts in London are principal homeowners and have one or more spare bedrooms in their space. By Host, we don’t mean someone who shows people around the city and gives their Guests tours.
By Host, we mean people who create and take care of the space, and turn it into a Home. Having a Host in the space ensures engagement with the local community, unlike typical houseshare/full-flat rental platforms where there is no established culture within the homes. All Hosts publish their House Rules and have a preference for who they would like to live with, as 75% of our community is female. For many women, young and old, living with other women is safer, so many on our platform will request to have female Guests only.
In the future, we plan to roll out an Ambassador program that will allow ANYONE to become the Host of a home. And we want to have spaces that range in size from 1 bedroom, up to 10. Our ‘How To Room For Tea’ Guide shares ideas on how to create themed homes around Arts, Culture, Innovation, and other ideas:
Request ‘How To RoomForTea’ Guide
A Living Room:
All RoomForTea’s have a living room where people can come together to sit and relax, share a story, have a cuppa (or something stronger).
Many companies in the current real-estate market will exploit young tenants who need an affordable room by stripping the house of all collective space and turning it into a glorified bunkhouse. We don’t believe in this approach, as #SharedLiving requires common space to be able to actually share.
Private Bedrooms:
RoomForTea is NOT a commune. We don’t have large rooms with several beds, or let several people cram themselves into one room.
Our rooms are comfortable, private bedrooms, enabling all Hosts and Guests to have peace and quiet on their own terms. Furthermore, each room — and by extension each home — is unique, it reflects the character and style of the host.
A Kitchen Table:
Not all our Hosts want their Guests to cook up a storm (check each Host’s House Rules), but all RoomForTea’s have a kitchen table where they can share meals or a morning cuppa.
The kitchen table is an important part of our SharedLiving ethos, encouraging people to get together and chat when the stay starts. Unlike other platforms, it is very common for the Stay to start with ‘shall we have a cup of tea?’
Spirit of Exchange:
Both Hosts and Guests will fill out a profile detailing their interests, living preferences, profession, and other details that help others understand how it would be to live together. A RoomForTea Stay requires both parties to have some interest in exchanging, whether for a brief moment or on a more extended basis. For example, some people will share skills on RoomForTea or cook meals together on a weekly basis. Others will simply share a little bit about themselves and their story. There are no rules, other than being open to exchange and not using RoomForTea like every other platform.
Combined these ingredients form the basis of the HostedHome. Are you interested in creating your own RoomForTea? Let us know!
In the meantime, we are on a drive to have 150 fully-occupied Hosted Homes in London by the end of 2018, please share this post with others who can help us achieve our mission. #HH150
