| 
As winter approaches and the weather turns cold, the rental market in Boston remains hot. According to The Boston Foundation’s 2017 Housing Report Card, apartment rental rates in the city increased 6.9 percent annually between 2009 and 2016.
Acknowledging a serious shortage of housing, 15 Boston-area cities and towns recently announced a regional plan to add 185,000 units of housing by 2030. With average housing costs now exceeding 50 percent of income for anyone in Boston making the median U.S. salary, both younger and more mature urban professionals are turning to shared housing.
Traditionally played out in triple-deckers and pre-WWII apartment buildings, the shared housing experience is now being transformed. Savvy developers and investors are meeting the demand with co-living, an innovative concept that provides an exceptional living experience for less than the cost of a private apartment. Investment in micro and co-living apartments has exceeded a billion dollars nationally over the past decade.
In Boston, what started with many small projects is now scaling up, with bigger projects like 7INK by Ollie at National Development’s Ink Block in the South End. Scheduled for completion in 2020, 7INK by Ollie will offer 245 shared co-living apartments with disruptive design philosophies.
Co-living combines the amenities, finishes and conveniences of luxury private apartment buildings with technology and active social programming to create a living experience that suits a growing market segment and parallels larger shared economy trends. In the typical co-living apartment, three or four housemates share a fully furnished apartment consisting of a kitchen and one or two bathrooms, while enjoying small private bedrooms. This is a significant departure from the traditional American housing model, which started out with a small apartment, progressed “up the ladder” to a bigger apartment, then a “starter home” and eventually a big house, often in the suburbs. Today, technology and a desire to be in the city are totally transforming that pattern. Whereas suburban homes are designed for private, exclusive use of all their spaces, today’s co-living apartments reflect the social, sharing economy of 2018.
John H. Martin; photo by Benjamin Cheung
Design Throwback
At both work and home, our lives are less linear today. In the workplace, our careers are defined by agility, flexibility and open-mindedness. Our lives are increasingly intertwined with technology where we learn, earn and socialize. We have also begun to realize that a willingness to share leads to a more efficient, more sustainable and less expensive lifestyle, whether in our workspaces (open offices, co-working), cars (Uber and Lyft), travel accommodations (AirBnB), bicycles (CitiBike, BCycle, BlueBikes) and now, housing through co-living.
Co-living residents enjoy higher quality furnishings, appliances, social spaces and amenities than they could afford on their own. Thanks to proprietary roommate matching technologies, co-living communities make the challenge of finding compatible housemates safe, efficient and exciting. The addition of an impressive menu of structured and unstructured social opportunities fosters acceptance, multiculturalism and diversity as residents learn the life skills required to succeed in our society today.
By limiting the private space to our bedrooms and sharing all of the other spaces, each resident can enjoy a higher quality environment than other models of living.
In design terms, this is not altogether new. Think about the grand hotels of the 19th and early 20th century. Guest rooms were small and utilitarian, but the public spaces – the lobbies, dining rooms, ballrooms, verandas and recreational spaces – were large and ornate.
As technology and media of the last half of the 20th century brought information and entertainment into our rooms, the guest rooms grew larger and more luxurious, while the public spaces such as lobbies and meeting rooms became smaller and more driven solely by function.
In the 21st century, the trend is reverting. Newer hotels are once again emphasizing the drama, allure and social nature of their public spaces while shrinking the size of the private guest rooms.
Will this enthusiasm for co-living fade? Investors are betting this way of living will remain attractive to many, even as they grow older and marry. Perhaps the largest unknown is how co-living will accommodate families with children. As the quality of life in our cities improves (education, public open spaces, walkable environments) more and more people will want to raise children in the city and housing will need to adapt to these families. Ollie’s cofounder and CEO Chris Bledsoe is optimistic that this model can and will adapt to meet these needs. He notes that even today, approximately 20 percent of all inquiries for co-living are from older adults who want to come back to the city from the suburbs or traditional private apartments.
Like many others, Bledsoe believes that co-living is creating a permanent niche in a complex overall housing ecosystem. He is devoting his company to accommodating every aspect of that renter profile, from the minute a prospective tenant goes online to look for an apartment until he outgrows the model, which, if Bledsoe and his peers are successful, may be a very long time.
John H. Martin is a principal at Elkus Manfredi Architects.
