WeWork Moves into Coliving
Coworking giant WeWork is launching WeLive, a project combining their coworking spaces with dorm-style micro apartments.
Here's the description of the Arlington, VA project from the press release:
The Crystal City project will be WeWork's first residential building, bringing the same benefits of co-working – shared amenities, a sense of community and opportunities for collaboration – to a residential building. The project will offer an entirely new type of apartment living within walking distance of the Crystal City Metro Station, several bus stops and Capital Bikeshare stations, and will serve as a model for adaptive reuse of an outdated building until redevelopment can occur.
The 12-story building will have 252 units, many of them 360 square feet or less, and several shared two-story “neighborhoods” with expansive common areas. The neighborhoods will be connected by staircases and feature commercial-grade kitchens, dining areas and shared community spaces.
WeWork's not the only company interested in coliving.
General Assembly co-founder Brad Hargreaves is starting a coliving company. Key quote from a Fast Company article on his plans:
"The biggest problem that our students would always have at General Assembly is how do they find low-cost, flexible housing that has some of the same community values that we built," he says. "Many of our students can’t qualify for leases."
Fast Company's Six Months Inside a Coliving House, Silicon Valley's Answer to Urban Housing Problems nicely covers what it's like living in these places.
While the coliving movement is definitely gaining steam, it's not without hiccups. One of the larger coliving businesses, Campus, announced last week it was closing.
And not everyone is positive about coliving. Pacific Standard's Silicon Valley's Extremely Expensive Bunk Beds makes it clear they don't like much about this movement.
But much like coworking, coliving makes sense for many people. And much like coworking, we expect it to become increasingly common.