Hubert de Blignieres doesn’t want to deal with moving furniture and dishes and he certainly doesn’t want to deal with troublesome roommates.
So for the better part of the past two years, de Blignieres, 35, has been renting a bedroom in a fully furnished shared four-story townhouse in Toronto’s Junction neighborhood, where he is also working to start a business.
He rented the master bedroom before the pandemic drove him back to his hometown of Paris, France. Now that she’s back in Toronto, she rents a secondary room for $ 1,600 a month and scoffs at the idea of renting her own apartment.
In a city where one-bedroom apartments cost more than $ 2,000 a month on average, more companies are betting on coexistence, a grown-up version of dorm life, to take off in Toronto as it has in other expensive places. like San Francisco and New York.
A Toronto developer has already laid out plans to build a conviviality community in the Weston area, while another New York-based conviviality company plans to bring 650 units here.
Living spaces, where adults rent a room in a shared house or apartment for less than they would pay for a one-bedroom or studio apartment, often come with other perks such as dry cleaning, high-end services, and … something many Toronto residents have missed during the pandemic: the company.
The house that De Blignieres currently shares with two other people is operated by a company called Sociable Living, one of the city’s first co-living operators. It is cleaned weekly and regularly stocked with everyday items, from toilet paper and shampoo to dish soap, everything but food.
“It’s very convenient. I hate moving. I hate furniture, so it’s very easy for me. The location is the best. I’m 15 minutes from the airport, the UP (Express) train, that’s amazing,” he said.
Three or four tenants, depending on the size of the townhouse, paired by Sociable Living, share a common kitchen, living room, roof terrace, and in some cases, a bathroom.
Coexistence is still relatively unknown in Toronto, but that is changing.
Toronto developer EDEV is proposing a nine-story building on Weston Road, north of Denison Road East, that would combine 26 cohabitation apartments with 16 traditional apartments. The proposal is before the Etobicoke Community Council on Monday.
New York-based co-living company Common is also developing 650 units here, though it did not say where and when it expects them to be built. Meanwhile, he is designing and managing a mixed-use building in Ottawa as part of a planned development by Dreams Unlimited.
Common says its shared living rooms rent 15 to 25 percent less than a studio apartment in the same neighborhood.
“I see so many similarities in the Toronto housing crisis to what we’ve seen in places like New York City and Seattle where Common was able to add more housing and achievable options for renters,” CEO Brad Hargreaves said in an email. answering questions from the star.
EDEV Coexistence Expert Vanessa Flint says that while young adults will remember the sense of community from their college days, modern coexistence spaces are very different from dormitories or boarding houses.
They are beautifully designed homes that offer everything from luxury finishes and high-end coffeemakers to services like dry cleaning pickup, package delivery, and apps that open doors or alert management when something needs to be fixed.
“This is attractive to a whole generation that uses Uber to get around, uses Uber Eats to get their food every night. They are living and enjoying life and having experiences, ”said Flint.
The concept is more appealing, he said, to a mobile generation that doesn’t expect to work in the same location for their entire careers, who is less ownership-oriented and more sustainable, so they don’t necessarily want to buy their own appliances. and plates.
“It is not because they cannot afford it. It’s because they don’t want it. They don’t want to spend such a large percentage of their income on housing costs, ”Flint said.
EDEV says Weston draws tenants from among the 50,000 workers in the Pearson airport area and those who want to get downtown in 15 minutes.
Roman Bodnarchuk, the founder of Sociable Living, doesn’t say how many townhouses his company rents as living spaces in Junction and downtown Berkeley Street or in its expanded markets in Miami and Costa Rica.
“What I can tell you is that, in our first year (2019), we had over 100 residents,” he said.
Sociable Living tenants sign a three month minimum stay, but there is no longer term lease. Although there are exceptions, Bodnarchuk prefers to rent to singles. Couples tend to stay home and cook every night, so they end up dominating the refrigerator space, he said.
Sociable Living solves many rental problems, says Bodnarchuk. Newcomers to the city face a highly competitive rental market.
“Unless you have a great credit report, you won’t get a spot,” he said.
Then there’s the expense: “Let’s say you saw a one-bedroom apartment for $ 1,750. It sounds attractive. Except you haven’t taken into account about $ 15,000 worth of things you need to live on, ”he said.
That’s a great investment in a gig economy, says Bodnarchuk. It states that Sociable Living saves its tenants an average of $ 500 a month in furniture and cleaning costs.
“All you really need is a suitcase. We pay for all utilities. We have the fastest internet in town. We have Netflix and 65-inch smart TVs. It’s all the best, but it’s stress-free, ”he said.
One of the biggest benefits of living together is that it provides an instant community, something Bodnarchuk says is rare in apartments and condos.
Loneliness is an epidemic. It’s worse than smoking and people don’t even talk about it, ”he said. That’s why everyone in Toronto has a dog. This is how they are solving it, with an animal. We’re doing it with humans and I think it’s very powerful. “
He hopes that a calendar of regular social events, which were suspended during the pandemic, will be restored in January.
With the exception of one person, de Blignieres says he has befriended all the tenants who have moved into his house.
“I am French from France. We are used to sharing everything, ”says de Blignieres. But, for coexistence to work, there has to be respect for the shared space.
“We have to be able to communicate and tell each other when there is something we do that bothers the other, explain to new people how it works, live by some rules in a community,” he said.
“When people hear that, it’s really amazing. It’s a lot of fun, ”said de Blignieres, who lately has been enjoying jam sessions with a new roommate, who plays guitar.
“We had a great time together,” he said of his two current roommates.
Bodnarchuk says he’s only ever had one roommate situation gone wrong. But there is always an empty room available so that in case a situation doesn’t work out, someone can be instantly moved to a house in the same area.
Sociable Living is “creating a modern family,” he said. New tenants undergo a regular criminal background check and interview with potential housemates, who can give a newcomer the go-ahead. But a modern family requires modern methods, and Bodnarchuk also employs Artificial Intelligence (AI) to match tenants.
“It sounds scary, but it isn’t,” he said. The AI “reads all the social media posts you have made on all platforms. So in seconds (it) can read all Facebook, Twitter and Google posts. Based on the words and frequency you use, it is incredibly accurate in predicting your personality type. We can overlap that with the other roommates. We will know in seconds if it will work or not, “he said.
Flint points out that coexistence has been around forever. The newest format is driven by changing lifestyles.
“TO Many young professionals want to live in an urban area. However, going to buy a one-bedroom (apartment) for themselves is quite expensive, ”he said.
Living together is a relatively affordable alternative.
Reference-www.thestar.com