Common is bringing a second coliving option to DC

Common, the Brooklyn-based, venture-backed coliving company founded by General Assembly cofounder Brad Hargreaves, is coming to D.C. (That makes two news pieces on Brooklyn expansions to D.C. this morning.) The company plans to open a house in Shaw in December — its third city after New York and San Francisco.
“Richardson,” as the house will be known, promises community and all of the benefits of the Shaw neighborhood. “Mostly developed in the 1900s, Shaw is lined with little pockets of the past,” the website reads. “Cobblestone streets are juxtaposed with modern coffee shops, stores, and nightlife.”
Charming.

Shaw is the perfect neighborhood for us to open our first #DC home. https://t.co/mndMa9d2GA #sharedliving #community #homesweethome pic.twitter.com/Ayu81fLyHV

— Common (@hicommon) October 7, 2016

Richardson will have 24 furnished rooms, each with a private bathroom and shared living, dining and cooking areas. A 12 month contract will run you about $1,700. There’s a waitlist here.
Common’s Richardson will actually be the second such coliving experiment in the D.C. area. WeWork opened a location of its WeLive brand in Crystal City back in May. And of course, in a broader sense, D.C. dwellers are no strangers to (let’s call it) large-scale cohabitation. The group houses of Columbia Heights, Capitol Hill and Adams Morgan are perhaps the city’s most distinctive housing feature, especially for young, new residents.
Group houses offer built-in community in a city that can feel overwhelming, as well as cheaper rent in an expensive housing market. Coliving spaces like Common and WeLive deliver more on the former — $1,700 isn’t bad for a furnished studio apartment (basically), but it’s also not cheap. Then again coliving tends to go hard on convenience, offering things like month-to-month rent as flexibility, and that’s the kind of convenience you can expect to pay extra for.
It remains to be seen whether this variety of coliving will take off in D.C. Our sister site Technical.ly Brooklyn called 2016 “The Year of Coliving” in January — could this apply here as well?