Editorial: Co-living is here to stay

Society and government are blind to the truth hiding in plain sight that housing, even ‘affordable’ housing, is beyond the reach of the people who need it the most: young working people starting out in their careers with plans of having a family. According to a recent study, it would take a person earning about Rs 10 lakh annually and saving 30% of that income not less than 109 years to be able to buy a 1,184 sq ft apartment in Mumbai at current prices. In Chandigarh, adjusting for earnings and costs, that would take 15 years. Southern metros Chennai (37 years), Bengaluru (36), Thiruvananthapuram (26), Vizag (26) and Hyderabad (23) fall between those extremities, all requiring the better part of a young professional’s working lifetime.

Millennials and Gen Z youngsters are not waiting around for governments to wake up to their housing needs and are making do with co-living, a model where unrelated individuals share furnished apartments with private bedrooms and common living spaces. It’s not the sort of soft-focus solution promised by real estate brochures, but a coping mechanism for a generation that has been handed down a broken-down economy with make-believe wage growth. Growing annually at about 17%, co-living has become an option for migrant professionals in India’s most expensive cities like Bengaluru, Pune, Delhi-NCR, Hyderabad, Mumbai, and Chennai. It allows them to enjoy a modicum of personal space while earning a make-ends-meet salary.

However, in India, this essentially second-best solution is having to contend with opposition stemming from cultural, utilitarian and regulatory factors. In Mumbai, several residential welfare associations (RWAs) object to co-living tenants, citing security concerns, overuse of lifts, water and waste disposal facilities, and scarcity of parking space. Local residents fear overcrowding, high noise levels and erosion of community cohesion. Regulators, with an eye on tax revenues, see co-living as a commercial operation that falls in the grey zone between rental housing and hotels, thus eluding safety norms and code compliance.

Then there is ubiquitous moral policing by RWA uncles on mixed-gender living, parties, late-night guests, and perceived "loose lifestyles." In Hyderabad this week, some Congress busybodies petitioned the chief minister to crack down on co-living for normalising unmarried men and women living under the same roof and hurting Indian values by wearing nice clothes.

Emerging housing trends such as co-living are a symptom of a broader complex of sky-high real estate prices, concentrated economic development and urban migration that no government has been able to address meaningfully. However, if the government can't control real estate prices, the least it can do is ask RWA uncles to mind their own business. Rules must be made to protect co-living tenants' interests, which include the freedom to party anytime within decibel limits, listen to music and eat food of their choice and cohabit with anyone they prefer. Additionally, regulators must intervene to apply norms that apply to other hospitality service providers, such as fire safety and clean water.

Since co-living is here to stay, in a manner of speaking, it is best if the government aligns it with broader urban planning. As is the best practice in Singapore, municipalities can develop norms for minimum room size, number of tenants per house, tenancy rules, and administer them as the old rent controller used to.