Introduction

Project Under One Roof is about trying something different to what we have grown up thinking about housing and family. Because it is about at least two families sharing a single household building in order to reduce the individual burden of finance and upkeep, such an undertaking is sure to have challenges of its own. We must be prepared to think that some of the challenges that we’ll run into along the way will be unforeseen or underestimated. One proposal is to break things down into smaller steps where the stakes start low and work our way up only when we’re ready to do so after adapting to the present iteration. The principle is just that: that this be an iterative process of development. In this essay, three phases are outlined.

Vision

While this idea started because of me, to constrain the development of this project solely to my own vision and comfort zone would not only be selfish and go against the imperative of compromise, it would also undermine the project’s potential – especially in the long run. My opinion shouldn’t matter any more than anyone else’s. In fact, my argument is that opinion should play a minimal role and that we instead follow a set of principles which hopefully have broad enough applications to have enough of an influence on project development and sustainability. The ultimate goal is to become less dependent on society’s iffy financial-market economic system through sustainability and to promote our wellbeing which includes the quality of social relations.

Principles

Because opinions are often at the root of conflict or division at the very worst, the argument is that taking a more empirical approach is to be taken in matters where action or inaction will have real consequences. This hopefully and indiscriminately reduces the weight of people’s opinions in matters that are important. The idea being that not one of us knows what is ultimately best for the project and so it becomes important to have a method or a set of principles to help us figure that out because there certainly is a lot that needs to be figured out as we develop and scale up. The more we figure things out, the better we get at doing what we’re set out to do. In theory this means that it will make us less and less vulnerable to hiccups in the surrounding economic system as well as becoming a more stable and adaptable group of people with a common goal where exploitation is very minimal – especially relative to the surrounding society. What that will ultimately look like or how exactly it will work, only time will tell.

Phase 0: Dialogue and Planning

The phase we’re currently still in. At this point in time, too many of us are still in college and without income. In the meantime, it’s good that we try to figure things out. Because this idea isn’t all that new or unique, it is recommended that we talk to other people as well about this and not just between ourselves. What’s more, each of us have our own set of ideas that could be put to use which in itself poses a challenge for us to compromise. The will seems to be there but skill is still lacking as communication has been very limited due to the circumstances. The only time we can really get talking about this is when I return home from studying abroad. Communication through online means hasn’t proven very helpful due to sporadic availability time of each of us. Writing essays like these is also part of it – exchange of ideas and all that.

Phase 1: Renting a House

At this point it would be unwise to design a house when we’re not entirely sure what kind of design will be best suited for our needs. What’s more, the stakes are very high when lack of experience is taken into account. By renting a house and sharing it, we will hopefully get acquainted with the most fundamental challenges while the stakes are still low. The best we will be able to do within these constraints in order to move towards decreased dependence on the economic system would be conservation through sharing. The most challenging area is believed to be how our money gets handled and how to keep things fair in this regard. More fundamental is learning to compromise in what is likely to be a less-than-optimally-suited house. As we go through this experience, we can really start to talk about what the design of our household should include to make things easier. Further preparing for the next phase, we can save our money in order to need a smaller loan to pay for the more adapted house as well as being able to pay off the mortgage more quickly, saving us a lot on interest payments. Only when we get there can we really gauge how much was saved from the financial system.

Phase 2: An Adapted Home

Aside from being better suited for multi-family housing, here we will also experiment with technologies and/or practices that make us even less dependent on the market. This could range from collecting rain water to having solar panels for our energy to permaculture. There will be constraints as to what can be done on a given plot of land. At its core, what I can say for now though, is that it could be pictured as an ordinary house with an extra bathroom and more bedrooms. Things could look different when we get there.

Possibilities For Upscaling

This is all projection and I can’t really tell you what’s going to happen here with any shred of certainty. It could be a bigger household building to house a larger number of families or it could be more of a complex with more specialized compartments. It starts to look more like a community than a household and that’s going to require some serious organization. It is likely to be self-sufficient when to comes to food, water and energy. It’s improbable that our horizons for sustainability would be limited to just those three things at that point. Who knows how much the importance of income would have dwindled by then. Personally, I do look forward to seeing this happen but we have a long road ahead before we get there.

Looking forward to feedback.