Group Living and Other Recipes: A Memoir

Freedom and structure: Too much freedom is meaningless. Too much structure is stifling. Some structure creates space for free experimentation. Being together and being alone: One creates the pleasure of the other. Without one, the other becomes oppressive. Power and surrender: Sometimes we need to be unyielding and determined; at other times, we de

Endurance in group-living settings requires living inside contradictions.

there are more expansive ways to imagine home.

Equity does not mean charging everyone the same price. I began bringing sliding scale into my personal life.

Giving and receiving care changes us, which in turn changes our culture.

Striking the balance between letting new people in and pulling your existing community close—between inclusiveness and intimacy—is a tension at the heart of most groups,

“Ephemerality is a virtue,” she writes. Failure and transitoriness should be endemic to the utopian attempt.

Intentional communities don’t inherently create the conditions for what I love about group living—camaraderie, intimacy, synchrony. I’m drawn to something less structured than an intentional community but less atomized than the nuclear family, some squishier in-between place. I’m unwilling to participate in the amount of process these communities d

limited-equity housing cooperatives. In New York City, there are over eleven hundred HDFCs (Housing Development Fund Corporation co-ops).