La Casa is a seven-bedroom house run by the people who live in it. There’s no manager. The house makes its own decisions, splits its own costs, and cooks most of its own dinners.
Here’s how it actually works.
The money
You get a private bedroom and share everything else — kitchen, living room, bathroom, basement, yard, garden.
Rent is split by square footage rather than divided evenly. Your share is the size of your room relative to all the private space in the house, plus an equal seventh of the shared space. Bigger room, bigger share. It works out to roughly $300–500 per month depending on which room is open.
Utilities are split evenly — internet, water, sewer, trash, recycling, gas and electric. Budget around $100–150 per month depending on the season.
Food works differently with each group of house members due to dietary restrictions and social norms. Inquire with the current housemates on how the food system operates.
Maintenance fund is $15 per person per month, covering small repairs and household supplies.
Deposit is one month’s rent plus $200.
Everything gets calculated on the 24th and is due on the 26th. You write one check a month into the house account that covers all of it.
Cooking and the kitchen
Sharing food is a spiritual activity. That’s more or less the house position.
People cook for each other often — house dinners happen around 7pm most days — though there’s no rigid schedule. Some nights there’s a full table; some nights everyone fends for themselves.
A few soft rules hold it together:
- Clean up when you’re done in the kitchen.
- Add things to the shopping list on the fridge as they run out.
- Label leftovers with what they are and when they were made.
- If you have food you’d rather not share, put your name on it. Nobody minds.
- Compost bucket lives in the freezer. When it’s full, take it out to the pile.
Dish Doctor
Each person takes one day a week as Dish Doctor. That day you:
- Put away clean dishes
- Wipe down the counters
- Sweep the floor
- Take out compost, trash, and recycling
- Check for ants and open food
Bonus points for reloading the coffee and the butter dish.
One day a week each, and the kitchen stays livable. That’s the entire theory.
Decisions
The house meets every other Wednesday evening and makes decisions by consensus, loosely following the Formal Consensus model. Meetings are where the house sorts out everything from repairs to whether to get more chickens.
Rotating roles keep things running: Bills Calculator, Food Mathmagician, Membership Coordinator, and Shopper. Roles pass around; nobody holds one forever.
Labor
Beyond meetings and house roles, expect a few (2-4) hours a week of house duties — cooking, cleaning, projects, and whatever the season demands of a big old house and a garden.
What we’d want you to know
This is a real household, not a rooming house with extra steps. The systems above only work because people actually do them. If you’d rather pay a bit more for a place where nobody expects you at a Wednesday meeting, that’s a completely reasonable preference — this just isn’t that.
What you get in exchange: cheaper rent than almost anything comparable, a garden, a full kitchen, people who will notice if you’re having a bad week, and membership in something that’s been going since 1976.
How to join
New members are accepted by consensus of the current house. The process is deliberately unhurried:
- Get in touch. Email lacasacollectiva@gmail.com and tell us a little about yourself.
- Fill out the application. We’ll send it along. It asks the practical things: references, move-in timing, dietary preferences, pets, emergency contact.
- Come for dinner. We’ll invite you over — more than once, ideally. It’s the only real way for everyone to figure out whether it’s a fit, and it gives you time to think it over too.
- The house decides together. By consensus, as with everything else.
Rooms open up a few times a year. Even if nothing’s available right now, it’s worth writing — turnover is hard to predict.
La Casa Grande Colectiva 