The Rise of the Roommate | The Walrus

In the public imagination, the nuclear family still looms large as the de facto template for “home.” But the numbers tell a different story. In 2016, there were roughly 582,000 noncensus family households across Canada—homes of two or more people outside of parent-child or partnered relationships. South of the border, more than one-third of US adul... See more

In Canada, urban co-living startups, like Roost and SoulRooms, echo the broader turn toward “adult dorm” housing setups seen in cities from Dublin to New York.

But, while the rise of the roommate may be further evidence of our unlucky, market-driven fate, some of its potential outcomes also offer hope—a way back toward an experience of community that we lost with the nuclear-family model. Nonfamily cohabitation calls for a kind of learned care that’s honed through negotiating interpersonal boundaries with... See more

None of this should come as a surprise. Millennials like me comprise the largest living generation in North America, yet we are grossly underrepresented in the ranks of homeowners in the US and Canada alike. In both countries, a rising proportion of this demographic is delaying marriage or forgoing it completely.

It may be tempting to see the increase in adult roommates as some harbinger of “The Decline of X,” with the implicitly righteous variable standing for “the family,” “home ownership,” “economic stability,” “the middle class,” “a culture of commitment,” or any host of factors to which we’ve arbitrarily ascribed moral value. Such conclusions wouldn’t ... See more