What is Collective Housing?

Collective housing is a way to share space and time to enrich and support the lives of residents.

Each house is independently designed, just like your typical apartment, and individual privacy is maintained. In addition, however, we also boast various shared rooms, which we call the Common Space. The Common Space includes the common kitchen, the common living room, the garden, Kids’ Space, the laundry room, and the guest room. Residents can utilize the Common Space at any time. There is no janitor; because collective housing is managed and run by the residents, the residents clean and run these spaces themselves.

The basis of collective housing is common meals. We hold communal meals called common meals 2-3 times per week. These help us to get to know each other and encourage good communication. Common meals, of course, are cooked by residents. Residents are obligated to perform various tasks, and one of them is joining a team of 2-3 people once a month to cook for the common meal. By cooking one common meal a month, residents can eat partake in ten warm dinners a month.

For the collective house to run smoothly, the residents make groups to maintain the common spaces, manage the common meals, and daily commodities inside Kankanmori. In addition to these tasks to enrich our lives here, there are some duties that deal with outside Kankanmori such as holding orientations or cope with media coverage. Each resident is required to take on a few roles. All residents also work together to take care of the shared spaces: fixing the wooden decks on the communal terrace, for example, as well as more general maintenance and cleaning. Announcements and discussion of any issues that come up takes place during a regular monthly meeting.

Residents communicate with each other on a daily basis through common meals, or in monthly regular meetings as well as more spontaneous chats in the laundry room, garden, or hallways, in addition to various official events.

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