What exactly is communal living? It was born out of the minds of flower power kids and came about during the 1960’s however, that is not still how it is, as it did not die off with the end of Woodstock. It’s still alive and well albeit transformed and revitalized.

Communal living communities are intentional communities where people live together on the basis of explicit common values. In the U.S. alone Crain’s Chicago Business states such communities “stood at 1,055 up from 325 in 1990. Those groups are recognized by the Fellowship for Intentional Community based in Rutledge, Mo.” According to their website the Fellowship for Intentional Community (FIC) began in 1987 and is a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting cooperative culture. “We believe that intentional communities are pioneers in sustainable living, personal and cultural transformation, and peaceful social evolution. The FIC exists to make sure communal living areas truly thrive and they currently recognize 2508 intentional communities.

There seems to be resurgence in communal living not just because organizations like the FIC exist but because “baby boomers are tired of the capitalistic, individualistic way they’ve been living and are craving a more sustainable, community way of life,” says Joani Blank, 77, of Oakland, Calif., a former board member at the Cohousing Association of the United States. A Durham, N.C. based organization that aims to create communities one neighborhood at a time. These communal living communities are all over the nation including Chicago which has twenty six of the thirty seven communal living communities in Illinois. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, in 2000, 83,500 households in Chicago contained people who were unrelated but were living together. That number jumped to 93,500 in 2013. This type of cooperative living is not new but it is readjusting the definition of the “American Dream.” It seems like people don’t mind living with people they don’t particularly know as long as their intentions are the same.

The purpose of these communal living spaces seems to be less of that spiritual concept born in the 60’s and more of preferring cooperative spaces to live and potentially raise kids in. Communal living isn’t meant to be a sentence it’s meant to be positive way of life where there are shared groceries, family dinners and a huge emphasis on group living and it does not matter if you’re related at all. The beauty of communal living is that you can live with unrelated people and share responsibilities that truly create a community.

In every article I have come across about communal living or co-living there seems to be some pushback from the government who take issue with four or more unrelated people living together in a house. However, one article likened getting rid of these communal living type arrangements to “cutting off the heads of a hydra”, the mythical Greek creature with many heads and every time you cut one off two more replaced it. That article implied you may shut down one communal living house but two if not more will be built and created its place. Communal living truly aims to restore and revive neighborhoods by creating communities where likeminded people can prosper and survive, unlike gentrification communal living spaces aim to make their neighborhoods more diverse and welcoming to all walks of life.

People living in a commune seem to have no problem dividing the duties amongst themselves such as paying the utilities, buying the groceries etc. The only thing holding communal living from truly taking off seems to be the negative connotation of what living on a commune used to mean as well as local governments being reluctant to change their ways. There seems to be no negative downsides to communal living as far as I can tell. It’s not a cult out in the middle of nowhere governing its own body its purely seems to be a heaven on earth. At its core communal living is just citizens living with likeminded individuals no matter race, religion sex and gender who would rather create communities and share the duties and responsibilities than live alone unhappily. It’s the dawn of a new area a better society where diverse communities of people aim to prosper and survive together and communal living is leading that charge.