Page 20 - C.A.L.L. #40 - Winter 2015

Is communal living making a comeback?

http://www.chicagobusiness.com
March 20, 2015
By Danielle Braff

A year and a half ago, 30-year-old Gunes Henderson and her family moved from
their house in suburban Aurora to a mansion in Hyde Park. Henderson and her
husband, both translators,
share a loud, busy house
with their two children
and 13 people, including
five children and a
newborn. She and her
family have two rooms to
themselves, all sharing a

bedroom and using their
other room as a library
and living room. The
family shares a bathroom
with another unrelated
John R. Boehm Gunes Henderson, her husband and their
adult.
two children live with 13 people in Hyde Park.
The Hendersons didn't know their housemates before finding them online and
moving into the 21-year-old community. “We wanted our kids to be around more
people and to feel like they had more of an extended family here,” she says, “to
be with more people, to cook together.”

While it's commonly thought that communal living ended with the hippie era of
the 1960s, it's still happening. Intentional communities—defined as people who
live together on the basis of explicit common values—stood at 1,055 in the U.S.
as of 2010, up from 325 in 1990. Those are the groups recognized by the
Fellowship for Intentional Community based in Rutledge, Mo.

Twenty-five of the 30 communities in Illinois are in Chicago, says Laird Schaub,
the group's executive secretary. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, in 2000,
83,500 households contained people who were unrelated but living together in
Chicago. That number jumped to 93,500 in 2013.

“Cooperative living is not new, but it's changing,” says Brigid Maniates, office
manager and bookkeeper at Qumbya Housing Cooperative in Hyde Park. While

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