[spondylosaurus]

> Charter houses could solve this problem neatly. A charter house or two could easily be set up with positions offered to people who are filling these roles, providing them with a minimum of support — at the very least, free rent and free high-speed internet. These people are professionals, so this may not be enough for them — but there’s no reason they can’t get support from the charter house and make additional money in other ways. They can supplement that support by consulting, getting a real job, being a bounty hunter, etc.

Maybe I'm missing something here, but I'm not sold on why this charter house arrangement is better (for either side involved) than just... paying people a salary.

Certainly it's easier to do regular payroll than to buy a huge house and be its landlord (really leaning into the "lord" part) and manage its residents' food + housing + transportation + healthcare needs. Most of that can be purchased with plain old money, and employers can offer insurance to employees without having to be their landlord too.

And then on the residents' side... it's bad enough now that I'll have to get a new health insurance policy if I quit my job, but if I had to find a new roof over my head, too? The power dynamic here doesn't sound great.

Like, in the context of "we want to fund a handful of random open-source contributors": if you have the funds to do this charter house thing, why not just open an LLC and use it to directly pay the people you're trying to support? Why does a literal house need to be involved?

[Moto7451]

I had a friend try this in upstate New York. The result? One ruined friendship and an alienated family member. The property was sold and no one ever talks about it. Leaning to the “lord” part is precisely right and the eventual “peasant revolt” is ugly.

The eventual plan was kinda cool. Offer a vacation destination as a digital detox zone for the Digital Nomad set. They knew a number of people in that space they could have marketed to. I think if they avoided the weird living/working arrangement it would have been fine.

[fragmede]

Someone I knew died in a car crash, but somehow we all keep driving cars. Just because your friend's one attempt failed terribly doesn't mean the whole idea is rotten. I'm aware of a number of successful communities/warehomes that are making it work.

[Moto7451]

You’re taking my one added data point and extrapolating. I did not say that communes can’t work.

[spondylosaurus]

"People living together often butt heads" isn't even an out-there concept. (It's one reason I and others would argue that even communes should have individual living quarters—everyone having their own apartment in a shared building versus everyone having one room in a sprawling mansion. The former can have shared common areas, but the latter becomes one giant common area.)

And I'll throw another data point in the pile: I've had too many friendships soured by turning friends into roommates. In part because we were all immature and bad at handling conflict, myself included (ah, college!), and in part because there can be people in your life who you love and cherish but do not want to share a kitchen with. I'd imagine tensions would have been higher if only one of us was paying rent and the others were living there for free.

[bluepizza]

You heavily implied it by discussing a negative experience, its consequences, and speculating that the communal aspect was the root cause. I am a little bit surprised that you are denying that core point.

[spondylosaurus]

Is it really a commune/communal space when one person owns the entire property?

[fragmede]

whether or not that it is the case is an absolutely fascinating question, but one that does not have anything to do with bluepizza's point.

[mold_time]

The original question is something like, "what’s the minimum form of scholarly institution?" If you want to set up a nonprofit to support a number of researchers/students/intellectuals, it's cheapest to 1) purchase housing "in bulk" and 2) buy rather than rent. Hence buying a house.

[fragmede]

Because community. Tossing money over the wall via an LLC doesn't automatically do that. There are no shared dinners, no impromptu coffee chats, no late night conversations without cohabitation.

[spondylosaurus]

Does buying a home and letting people live in it automatically created shared dinners or coffee chats though? I can't say I've ever done that with my landlord. And yeah, my landlord doesn't usually live with me, but I've also had a fair share of roommate arrangements where we were friendly but not exactly friends. Certainly not eating meals together.

[fragmede]

In the broader picture, where most adults are lonely and can't make friends, being negative and focusing on the friendships lost thru community housing seems a bit myopic. If the multitudes of relationships gained aren't worth the ones that are burnt - and I am not minimalizing those that are being burnt - it truely sucks to lose friends - but if, over the years, you haven't managed to gain more friends than you have lost, then something is wrong.

I can't say what, because I don't know you and your circumstances, nor your morals, or lack thereof, but it's Saturday night where I am, and I'm going to go enjoy it with friends that I've been avoiding, in favor of doom scrolling.