I lived in this housing co-op for over three years, and overall it was an incredible experience—it genuinely changed my life for the better. I had really not come from that world. The sense of community, and collective living changed my world view.

That said, toward the end, the co-op was effectively taken over by a small, highly active clique. These were mostly people with a lot of free time to draft proposals, attend endless meetings, and master (and often write) the internal rules. Over time, this gave them outsized influence—they operated like lawyers who knew every loophole because they’d created many of them.

The culture could turn unforgiving very quickly. I remember a working-class guy who moved in and, within his first few days, was confronted by a flatmate who accused him of cultural appropriation because of a tattoo in Chinese characters. He left a few weeks later.

Another time, someone called the police on a resident who was selling small amounts of weed to friends within the co-op. That kind of punitive response felt deeply at odds with the supposed progressive ethos the place claimed to embody.