“Co-living” Offers Driven Young Professionals Affordable Living and a Social Life

Let’s be honest: every now and then we catch ourselves saying, “I wish I was still in university.”

Not for the Aramark food or morning ‘Feminist Critique Of Christianity’ lectures, of course, but because your social life has taken a considerable dip since graduating.

As driven young professionals, it’s easy to understand why.

The majority of our waking hours are spent at our job, working towards our job, commuting to the destination of job, and living within the financial boundaries of a career that’s just in its infancy, which could either mean a lonely arrangement in the suburbs or in a slick downtown space that leaves no room for recreation after rent’s paid.

Recognizing this, two entrepreneurs from Syracuse decided to launch a ‘co-living’ space, CoWorks, which is essentially a dorm for adults that offers cheaper rooms than what you’d typically find downtown. It harnesses the social environment of university –including chef’s kitchen, game room, and TV room – while remaining attractive to career-oriented millennials with group dinners, pub crawls, and rooftop gardening just some of the initiatives in place to build a community among residents.

The width of the living space (Alana Samuels).

“We’re trying to make it a neighbourhood in a building,” he said. “You’re not staying in your room watching TV all day, you’re eating in the restaurants, going to the coffee shops and the bars, and doing it as a group,” co-founder Troy Evans told The Atlantic, still ruing his isolated post-college life in Philadelphia’s suburbs. Rent at CoWorks is between $700 and $900 USD, which fetches you 3oo square feet of living space, a small kitchen, bathroom, and bedroom.

Becoming a tenant is subject to an online recruitment process, which allows Evans and his partner, John Talarico, to screen applicants based on how well they’d fit into the community. They’ll also have the power to evict tenants who disturb the communal zen, an authority that bestows them with the title ‘social engineers’.

On a more macro level, the space also has the potential to revitalize the downtown areas of cities like Syracuse, which have been declining in population and allure for decades as people are confronted with rising rental prices and stagnant wages.

As The Atlantic points out, CoWorks isn’t the only endeavour that combines networking with communal living. It is, however, the first to combine shared space with micro units, a concept that’s significantly more accessible than more boutique live-work arrangements.

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