⚠️ This document is "Work in Progress". 🚧
As usual, if you are critical of "incomplete" ideas, please don't read this.
Our reasoning for why we want to build a @home
where people in the @dwyl community can live, learn, get/stay well
and work on something meaningful is simple: we want this for ourselves.
When we graduated from High School / University,
there was no place we could go/live
that was focussed on health/wellness
and where we could learn the skills
we needed for the 21st century
surrounded by like-minded motivated people.
If @home had existed
when we left our parents houses
and/or when we graduated from University,
we would have jumped at the opportunity!
We are building what we wish already existed!
Several people (including our main building contractor and foreman) have mentioned that the total cost to renovate an abandoned older house is very near to the cost of building from scratch. This is because with an older house the:
- plumbing has likely cracked
due to both use and disuse.
- pipes are probably made of materials that include lead and are
- electrical circuit will definitely need re-wiring firstly because wires/cables in older houses usually degrade over time and secondly because they were not properly grounded when they were originally installed so the circuits were not safe.
- all windows need to be replaced both for thermal and noise insulation.
- Walls need to be repaired after the new electrical conduit and cables are installed.
The fact that renovation is expensive is one we are painfully aware of but it is also one we embrace wholeheartedly; renovating an existing abandoned/unused house is the right thing to do both for us for the environment and the country.
In Portugal, there are an estimated 735,000 vacant/abandoned houses.
Rui Almeida has some incredible photos
of abandoned mansions: https://www.flickr.com/photos/ruialmeida
e.g: https://www.flickr.com/photos/ruialmeida/46333296912/
This Mail article is a good summary of the problem:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4028126/Portugal-mansions-sit-abandoned-photos-reveal-dilapidated-remains-half-lived.html
Not that you (or anyone) should/not read the Daily Mail ... 🙄
But the fact that "mainstream media" has covered the issue,
should indicate that it's a real problem.
Portugal has 10 Million people and 3.6 Million households, an average household size of 2.5 people. 735k/3.6M = 20.4% ... 😮 Approximately one fifth of the total housing stock of the country is abandoned!
This is a real problem because not only are the abandoned houses an eyesore on the landscape, they take up valuable space in prime locations! We feel that we need to be part of the solution to the abandoned buildings problem. We need to show leadership in renovating/restoring buildings and bring them back into the "housing stock" so that people who currently cannot afford to live in Portugal's cities can have a space to call their own.
In Portugal's major cities - including Lisbon, Porto, Faro, Coimbra and Braga - Landlords are using AirBnB to rent entire apartments to tourists.
According to AirBnB's official "overview" for 2016, 76% of listings on the platform are for entire homes or apartments.
This is public information
published by AirBnB themselves.
AirBnB is systematically accelerating
the unaffordability
of homes
to local residents.
It is clear that the platform
is not being used by people
renting out a "spare bed" in their home.
People who live in an apartment
do not rent out the entire apartment
for 84 nights per year
because otherwise they don't have anywhere to sleep!
The vast majority of listings
are owned/operated by professional landlords
or "property investors".
AirBnB's official stats
indicate that a "typical host"
earns an average of €7,000/year for 84 nights:
2016_EIS_Lisbon-Portugal_EN.pdf
€7000 / 84 = €83 / night or €7000 / 12 = €583 / month This may appear to be "good value for money" to a tourist or "digital nomad", but it's completely out of reach for a local.
A typical 2 bedroom apartment in Lisbon used to be available to locals for €300/month. If the Landlord can get €583/month without much more work.
The 66% guest growth rate the report highlights should
Prices have been pushed up way beyond what locals can pay see: https://www.euronews.com/2017/09/19/lisbon-s-tourism-magnet-is-kicking-out-local-residents -
We are not "against" the tourism influx, we recognise that Portugal needs visitors for the economy to continue thriving. We are against greedy landlords and opportunistic developers evicting local people out of their flats/houses in order to jack up prices on AirBnB. Working families are being made homeless so that landlords can make more profits. This is wrong and should be regulated by authorities to avoid locals being completely priced out.
To be 100% clear we are not hypocritically "throwing stones" at landlords. We own homes where we do not live. The homes we own are not "empty"; they are rented by people who either do not want to buy (because they have not finalised where they want to live long-term) or have not saved enough for a deposit. We deliberately set the rent of the houses we own below the "market rate" and do not increase rents the way greedy landlords do. We are not trying to accumulate a "property empire" to extract as much economic rent from working families. The only "property" we own were once our principal private residences. i.e. we bought a "run down" house, renovated it, lived in the house for 2+ years and after we moved on, instead of selling we decided to make the house/apartment available to others who need a place to live. We have not acquired property as investment exclusively for a return.
- "Why Are So Many Young Adults Living With Their Parents?": https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/living-single/201605/why-are-so-many-young-adults-living-their-parents
- Number of young adults living with parents reaches record high: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/young-adults-live-parents-at-home-property-buy-homeowners-housing-market-a8043891.html
- Average household size in Portugal in 2017: https://www.arcgis.com/home/item.html?id=47203c4c0c5840baaf68cb4fa0d6e22f
Please NOTE: following section is NOT intended as a "criticism" or "disrespect" of any particular individual person. It is purely an observation that I want to capture. I want to highlight the fact that some people don't understand what we are trying to build
@homeand that is a good thing! It's a sign that:
a) We are not doing a good enough job of sharing our vision.
b) The person/people simply does/do not want to think about the future or empathise with others who are less fortunate than them.
If people don't want to understand what we are trying to achieve or don't want to think about their own environmental impact or the selfishness of their lives, that's totally "OK". Each person has the right to live their life as they see fit. I/we chose to live our lives in a way that benefits everyone.
"If at first, the idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it." ~ Albert Einstein
As an entrepreneur, one of the best signs that you have an innovative idea is that some people simply don't "get" it. No matter how much you try to explain it to them, they simply don't have the imagination/empathy to understand that even though they are not the "target user", there are thousands/millions of other people who do want the product/service you are creating.
For example: When Brian Chesky, Joe Gebbia and Nathan Blecharczyk pitched their idea of an "Air Bed and Breakfast" to Fred Wilson in 2009, he loved them as founders, but tried to convince them to work on a different idea. Paul Graham, arguably one of the greatest startup investors, did not "get" the idea of renting a bed in your own home to a stranger through a website. Paul asked the founders the following question:
“People are actually doing this? Why? What’s wrong with them?”
8 years later AirBnB is by far the most valuable company in the YCombinator portfolio: https://www.ycombinator.com/topcompanies/
Watch: https://youtu.be/RUEjYswwWPY and read: http://www.paulgraham.com/airbnb.html https://www.wired.com/2017/02/airbnbs-surprising-path-to-y-combinator/
Over the last year
we have verbally explained
the idea of @home
to many people.
Most of those people
have immediately understood
and loved the idea
even if they are not a "target user".
But a handful have been confused by it.
One person in particular, who will remain nameless to avoid "embarrassing" them, really didn't "get" the idea at all! They only understood the idea in terms they could already envision. They would say "it's a hostel" ...
They simply did not have the imagination to understand the concept of "co-living", "location-independent working" or "life-long learning". It is inconceivable to them that anyone would voluntarily want to live with like-minded and interesting people. It's equally unimaginable that people would want to learn new things or do something they love for a living.
The person lives in a mansion
of similar size to the Braga @home
and has an empty (lonely/sad) life
they attempt to fill with TV, shopping and gossip.
No real substance. Nothing creative, innovative or original.
The person has been working the same paper-pushing job for several years and complains about it constantly. Each time they complain about their "boss" or their lack of pay increase, we say: "quit your job!" (the person has more than enough money to retire or retrain, but is terrified of being alone with their own thoughts, so instead relies on having a job to keep their days/mind occupied.)
The fact is this: if some people don't immediately understand your idea, that's a really good sign! If everyone gets it, then it is not very original.
### Why We MUST Live & Work @home
The person does not "get" what we are trying to build keeps insisting that we (Inês and I) should not live in the home when it's ready. They keep saying that we should rent/buy an apartment nearby. They don't understand that we are trying to build a community, not a "passive income business". They don't understand the first principal of design thinking process: empathy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_thinking#Empathy
via: https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/topics/design-thinking
Designing a home for someone else to live in
(without living in it ourselves)
will not be anywhere near as effective
as actually living there full-time
so that we can test all aspects
and feel any "pain points" first-hand.
The biggest problem with existing developer-lead for-profit co-living complexes -
such as "The Collective" in London which an ex-resident described as "Horrible, horrible place."
see: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16911318 -
is that they are designed by people who don't live in the building/community. The people living in the building are Tenants and are powerless to improve the building/community because the company that owns it cares about one thing only: profit.
Their lack of empathy is due to the fact
that they have never done
any creative problem solving work in their lives.
People who do not want to empathise with others,
will only see the world through their own lens.
They chose not to understand
that there are many people
who do not share their perspective.
Yet, by definition the world
is full people who do not share your exact point of view.
Places with only one view point are
fascist dictatorships ...