Co-op-erating

Is the modern-day commune the affordable alternative to Boston's high cost of living?

By ELLEN PRZEPASNIAK

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In a 12-person household, one might expect constant chaos. But open either refrigerator in this Dorchester home and you'll find meticulously-labeled shelves with food placed neatly above its corresponding tag and large Tupperware containers with Josh, Sarah, Micha, Jen and other names written in permanent marker on strips of masking tape.

The 12 residents of Seed Pod Co-op in Fields Corner—all in their 20s and 30s—buy communal groceries, eat six meals together each week and follow a strict chore chart. They belong to one of Boston's housing co-ops.

Communal living may evoke images of unwashed hippies or weirdo religious cults, but urban cooperative living has been thriving locally. With the US in a precession and the housing market in a slump, cooperatives can be a cheaper way to live in Greater Boston.

There's no official count of how many co-ops exist in Greater Boston, but the city seems to be a central location for them. Micha Josephy, resident at Seed Pod, estimates there may be 15 to 20 in Greater Boston; among them, Seed Pod, Millstone Co-op, Cambridge Co-op, Beaufort House, William Street and Spirit of '76 Co-op.

"Co-ops thrive in different environments for different reasons," Josephy says. "Boston is expensive. That's a big part of it."

Two popular spots for co-ops are Jamaica Plain and Somerville, where a proliferation of large and two-family houses suits a co-op with eight or 12 members. On its website, the Boston Community Cooperatives, a nonprofit for co-op members in the area, quotes figures that emphasize the high cost of living in the area: "When Massachusetts' incomes and housing prices are compared, Massachusetts is the third most unaffordable state in the country, giving it the sixth lowest home-ownership rate in the country."

Mark Shernicoff, president of the National Association of Housing Cooperatives, estimates more than a million units of cooperative housing exist in the country today, with several million people occupying them. Half of these are concentrated in the New York City area, a mecca for cooperative-style housing.

"It's shared costs, it's shared responsibility, it's shared obligation," Shernicoff says. "The risk is lower, especially in the affordable housing arena."

But the growing popularity of cooperatives is not limited to housing. There are consumer co-ops, businesses owned by their customers; credit co-ops, member-owned credit unions; and agricultural co-ops, where farmers pool their tools and resources.

The University of Wisconsin Center for Cooperatives is currently conducting the first comprehensive survey of cooperatives in the US. According to Brent Hueth, director of the Center, the census-type study will seek to identify cooperative businesses around the country, including housing co-ops. The results will be made available this fall.

Anne Reynolds, assistant director at the Center, feels housing co-ops work so well because of shared interest in the unique living situation.

"People know what they're getting into. People who I've talked to who are not students—they're new to the city or starting a new job in a new place—being able to come into a ready-made community is tremendously positive for them," Reynolds says. "People are more capable of democracy than we think they are."

Elizabeth Saunders, a resident at Seed Pod, has experienced this firsthand. "The main reason it works so well is because everyone there wants it to work," Saunders says, adding that she never comes home to an empty house and that she has five healthy meals on the table every week.

"One of the challenges of our society right now is that people are taken farther apart from each other in a lot of ways ... so the co-op really helps build community," she says. "On the environmental side, it's a sustainable way of living. We buy food in bulk, so we use less packaging. We have a smaller footprint."

Generally, co-ops break down into three categories: houses owned by one or two members, houses owned collectively by all the members and houses owned by a landlord and inhabited by all renters.

Seed Pod Co-op was the first home purchased by the nonprofit organization Boston Community Cooperatives in 2005. BCC purchases houses so that each resident has a stake in all the houses (which are owned collectively by all members) and the organization. The members of Seed Pod received guidance from a development consultant with North American Students of Cooperation, which organizes and educates co-ops.

"BCC is expansion-oriented, movement-oriented," Josephy says.

Some of founding members of Seed Pod and BCC came out of Millstone Co-op in Davis Square. Millstone is an eight-member house that has been active as a co-op since 1999. Its residents eat three meals a week collectively, share chores and have house meetings every two weeks. Joe Terry, who moved there last February, says the co-op's ad on Craigslist was what drew him in, specifically that they were looking for a "passionate life-liver."

"The diversity appealed to me," he says. "Their passion came through."

The three pillars to co-op living, Josephy says, are fairly universal: a community surrounding you, living cheaply and having control over where you live instead of answering to a landlord. "If you know you're living in a co-op and you're a naturally dirtier person, you know you have to work hard at being clean," Josephy says. "Or, if you're a neat freak, you would need to loosen up."

Seed Pod and Millstone both collectively cook vegetarian meals, and though some of the housemates do eat meat, they don't bring it into the house. Both co-ops also have people cook in teams so that the work is shared.

Rent at co-ops generally ranges from $400 to $600 a month. Sometimes the utilities are included. Often, another $50 or $100 is tacked onto the monthly rent for communal groceries, and some co-ops cook together as much as five times a week. Other co-ops are not as connected and do weekly potlucks. It's all up to the discretion of the housemates.

The members of Seed Pod pay different rents according to their room size, ranging from $495 to $611. All the housemates pay $50 more a month for utilities and $130 for food. At Millstone, the residents pay around $500 each, plus $125 a month for groceries and $50 a month for utilities. That is still considerably cheaper than most rents in Boston, where a tiny, one-person apartment can be at least $1,000 a month.

Josephy had lived in a dining co-op at Oberlin College in Ohio, and when he moved back home to Boston after graduation, he knew he wanted to live in one here.

"I fell in love with student co-ops," he says. "The dining halls were so institutional and so expensive. We were eating much better for much cheaper."

Many come to co-op living from college co-op situations. Alisa Lehman, who graduated from MIT in 2005, lived for three years in what MIT calls an "independent living group," (ILG) but is essentially a co-op. The 40 females who lived there bought communal groceries, ate meals together and shared chores.

"It really has more of a home feel than dorms," Lehman says. "One of the biggest advantages of the ILGs at MIT is that most have food included in the rooming costs and it's almost always way cheaper than dorms and a meal plan combined."

Seed Pod has a mostly failsafe method for keeping its three-story, 21-room house organized and clean. A wooden board in the first-floor living room lists all the cleaning chores. There are metal washers hung on hooks in columns to indicate which chores need to be done and which are already completed. Each housemate must do at least six hours of chores a week, so he can go to the board and choose whatever has not already been done, then move the washer over to indicate it's been finished.

Millstone has a similar system where residents get credit for completing chores. According to Terry, if a housemate hasn't been pulling his weight, he's self-aware enough to realize he should pick up the slack.

Millstone buys food in bulk from United Natural Foods to save money. They place their orders, pay through UNF's website and it's delivered to the house in Somerville every month. Terry, who helps coordinate this, wrote accounting software to make the ordering process easier. Agricultural co-ops are also growing in popularity as people in Boston participate in "farmshares" to access fresher food and to gain a more vested interest in where their food comes from.

One of the biggest roadblocks is high turnover among housemates. Terry believes that by raising the living standards at Millstone, people will want to stick around longer than just a year or two. He believes there are smart ways to spend money to have decent furniture and a nice backyard.

"I've always wanted people to stay longer," he says. "I want to stay longer."

The BCC provides a forum for all co-ops on an email listserv. On the BCC Co-op Network Listserv, people can post anything they like—co-ops looking for housemates, housemates looking for co-ops and community events that may be of interest to members, such as a meeting of United American Indians of New England or the annual Boston Skillshare.

Terry would like to see more interaction between all the co-ops. He, Josephy and others have been discussing an inter-co-op brunch once a month so that members from all co-ops in the area can network.

"We'd start with the social side, then segue into more practical projects," Terry says.

Already looking to grow, BCC has been talking to a co-op in Cambridge about merging. They hope to turn existing renter co-ops into owner co-ops so everyone has a stake in their home.

"It's a little intimidating," Josephy says. "But we see the benefit of growing our organization and using joint energy and finances to facilitate co-op living."