Students kick-start cooperative housing effort

UNCA students Katie Bachmeyer and Allison Schad are looking for more than just cheap rent and a way out of vacating campus over summer and winter breaks. Together they formed Students for Cooperative Living, a campus group that wants to beat the system and buy its own shared house for students only.

The two make it clear they're not looking for an off-campus Animal House, but for community, safety, affordability and self-expression.

"In a dorm, you feel like you're being stored in a place temporarily. A dorm is a place you are molded into, not a place you mold into something that represents what you want," said Schad, a 24-year-old anthropology student.

To Schad, a shared home is different.

"Your landlord can't raise the rent. You can alter the land, change what you want, grow what you want," she said.

Unwilling to pay the extra cost of a campus meal plan and unhappy with the prospect of bedroom-sharing, bathroom-sharing dormitory life, mass communication and anthropology major Bachmeyer, 25, tried life off-campus.

"I ended up living in the Grove instead, not that that turned out any better. Being an off-campus student makes it really difficult to feel a part of the community," she said.

Launching a new life off-campus, in a new city left her feeling strangely isolated, Bachmeyer said. When her humanities professor Ken Betsalel told his class he hoped none of them was eating alone, she said his comment struck her as a powerful indictment of problems with the off-campus lifestyle.

His words inspired her two-year personal journey, one now culminating in a student effort, recognized and aided by university officials, for a creative new option for off-campus housing.

As well as providing a housing alternative, Schad said a well-run cooperative house would let resident students avoid poor off-campus living conditions she's seen, like leaky roofs, ancient plumbing and up-all-night housemates involved in heavy drinking or heavy drug use.

"It's about a safe, comfortable, inspiring place to live," Schad said.

Students for Cooperative Housing isn't alone in seeking alternatives to America's standard models for nonfamily housing. Once identified with sexual freedom and drug use, the so-called intentional community now commands a new definition involving reduced environmental impact and social connectedness.

Mass Communication student Bill Marshall, 37, characterized communal living as a way to avoid the disconnectedness and isolation he sees as part of modern American life, where marriage and the nuclear family are commonly offered as the only options for meaningful social connection at home. Marshall once lived in Epping, N.H.'s Green Pastures Estate, a 40-member spiritual collective where residents dine communally and share farm work.

"There's a capacity to develop a deep sense of connection to each other," he said.

While there is little hard data currently available about modern shared housing, anecdotal evidence shows living communally provides cheap living, less energy consumption and more social connectedness.

Greensboro's Liz Seymour, 59, lived in a shared home from 2003 to 2008. In six years of cooperative life as a single parent, she never needed to work full time, not even while supporting her youngest child through his teen years, she said.

Her collective based rent on bedroom size. Seymour's share came to a little more than $330 a month, a sum that included a mortgage payment, household insurance, property taxes, electricity, water, gas, wireless internet, phone, a household fund for bulk foods (rice, olive oil) and a maintenance fund for upkeep

Many house mates also meant substantial grocery savings for a household that might otherwise have little motivation to buy in bulk. Seymour estimated that she spent no more than $40 a month on food while living communally. Pooled skills resulted in little money spent on repairs or maintenance, as house mates provided free services from house painting to stereo installation. The household saved thousands of dollars a year this way, Seymour said. The collective converted a dining room, downstairs study and upstairs sewing room into bedrooms, saving energy by providing shelter to six adults and a child in a formerly three-bedroom home.

"The way we live is more like the way most people have lived throughout human history, and the way many people still live," Seymour said of her unusual living arrangement. "The high rise apartment block and the suburban neighborhood are the real anomalies."

Before the UNCA group can start creating community the way Seymour's collective did, it needs to raise thousands of dollars solely through student effort.

According to Schad, if Students for Cooperative Housing raises 10 percent of the cost of an Asheville home, a nonprofit group will match funds and front the next 10 percent. Students for Cooperative Housing will then have a 20 percent cash-value down payment, allowing the group to find financing and get a mortgage, Schad said.

The student group's next step towards creating a new campus community is a fundraiser at the Orange Peel music club Dec. 8. Bachmeyer and Schad currently plan live music and a talent show UNCA students are invited to be part of.

Despite founding the group and helping plan its upcoming fundraiser, Bachmeyer acknowledges there is no way she'll be able live in the home Betsalel inspired her to seek two years ago. A December graduate, Bachmeyer works toward a goal she hopes other students will someday enjoy.

"In both our hearts, we know this is such a good thing for the whole community," she said.

Schad envisions a home where students not only connect to one another, but to the city of Asheville.

"I would like to see a group of students who serve the community as well, whether it's trash cleanup, volunteering with nonprofits or donation of any profits the house makes," she said. "I'd like to use the house as a hub to spread a sense of community."

"We love UNCA," she added. "It's an amazing university. We just want to add another dimension."

Contact Students for Cooperative Living at ourpiratehouse@gmail.com. Visit the group on Facebook as Students for Cooperative Living and on the Web at uncacoop.wordpress.com. Organizers encourage any and all comments and questions from interested students.

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