My big move: I was a single mum living in a sharehouse. A commune gave us a stable place to call home

We held festivals, started an energy cooperative and reduced our waste to almost nothing. But there are downsides to putting idealists of all stripes together

Some time ago I was a single mum living in a sharehouse in Melbourne’s inner north. While not an ideal housing scenario, I couldn’t afford to live alone, and I didn’t want to. Single parenting is isolating and about as far from “it takes a village” as it gets. But what is the ideal way to raise a kid? And where are the utopian communes of the 70s now?

Through the hippy grapevine, I heard whispers of a cohousing community seeking new members. To clarify, cohousing is a model of intentional community with independent dwellings and shared living spaces, managed collaboratively by the occupants. In other words, a commune – but with more structure and fingers crossed, fewer wind chimes.

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