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A roommate is a person with whom one shares a living facility such as a
room In a building or a ship, a room is any enclosed space within a number of walls to which entry is possible only via a door or other dividing structure. The entrance connects it to either a passageway, another room, or the outdoors. The space is ...
or
dormitory A dormitory (originated from the Latin word ''dormitorium'', often abbreviated to dorm), also known as a hall of residence, a residence hall (often abbreviated to halls), or a hostel, is a building primarily providing sleeping and residential qu ...
''except'' when being family or romantically involved. Similar terms include dorm-mate, suite-mate, housemate, or flatmate ("flat": the usual term in
British English British English is the set of Variety (linguistics), varieties of the English language native to the United Kingdom, especially Great Britain. More narrowly, it can refer specifically to the English language in England, or, more broadly, to ...
for an
apartment An apartment (American English, Canadian English), flat (British English, Indian English, South African English), tenement (Scots English), or unit (Australian English) is a self-contained housing unit (a type of residential real estate) that ...
). Flatmate is the term most commonly used in New Zealand, when referring to the rental of an unshared room within any type of dwelling. Another similar term is sharemate (shared living spaces are often called ''sharehouses'' in Australia and other Commonwealth countries). A sharehome is a model of
household A household consists of one or more persons who live in the same dwelling. It may be of a single family or another type of person group. The household is the basic unit of analysis in many social, microeconomic and government models, and is im ...
in which a group of usually unrelated people reside together, including
lease-by-room Lease-by-room, also known as individual leasing, is an arrangement whereby a tenant and their roommates pay rent for their own rooms instead of each tenant being equally liable for the rent for the whole apartment. Typically lease-by-room leases ...
arrangements. The term generally applies to people living together in
rental Renting, also known as hiring or letting, is an agreement where a payment is made for the use of a good, service or property owned by another over a fixed period of time. To maintain such an agreement, a rental agreement (or lease) is sign ...
properties rather than in properties in which any resident is an owner occupier. In the United Kingdom, the term "roommate" means a person sharing the same ''bedroom''; in the United States and Canada, "roommate" and "housemate" are used interchangeably regardless of whether a bedroom is shared, although at US universities having a roommate commonly implies sharing a bedroom. This article uses the term "roommate" in the US sense of a person one shares a ''residence'' with who is not a relative or
significant other The term significant other (SO) has different uses in psychology and colloquial language. Colloquially, "significant other" is used as a gender-neutral term for a person's partner in an intimate relationship without disclosing or presuming a ...
. The informal term for roommate is roomie, which is commonly used by university students and members of the younger generation. The most common reason for sharing housing is to reduce the cost of housing. In many rental markets, the monthly rent for a two- or three-bedroom apartment is proportionately less per bedroom than the rent for a one-bedroom apartment (in other words, a three-bedroom flat costs more than a one-bedroom, but not three times as much). By pooling their monthly housing money, a group of people can achieve a lower housing expense at the cost of less privacy. Other motivations are to gain better amenities than those available in single-person housing, to share the work of maintaining a household, and to have the companionship of other people. People become roommates when they move into a rental property, with one or more of them having applied to rent the property through a
real estate agent Real estate agents and real estate brokers are people who represent sellers or buyers of real estate or real property. While a broker may work independently, an agent usually works under a licensed broker to represent clients. Brokers and age ...
, being accepted and having signed a
lease A lease is a contractual arrangement calling for the user (referred to as the ''lessee'') to pay the owner (referred to as the ''lessor'') for the use of an asset. Property, buildings and vehicles are common assets that are leased. Industrial ...
.


Demographics

Housemates and roommates are typically unmarried young adults, including workers and students. It is not rare for middle-aged and elderly adults who are single, divorced, or widowed to have housemates. Married couples, however, typically discontinue living with roommates, especially when they have children. Those moving to another city or another country may decide to look for a shared house or apartment to avoid
loneliness Loneliness is an unpleasant emotional response to perceived or actual isolation. Loneliness is also described as social paina psychological mechanism that motivates individuals to seek social connections. It is often associated with a perc ...
. Social changes such as the declining affordability of
home ownership Owner-occupancy or home-ownership is a form of housing tenure in which a person, called the owner-occupier, owner-occupant, or home owner, owns the home in which they live. The home can be a house, such as a single-family house, an apartment, c ...
and decreasing
marriage Marriage, also called matrimony or wedlock, is a culturally and often legally recognised union between people called spouses. It establishes rights and obligations between them, as well as between them and their children (if any), and b ...
rates are reasons why people may choose to live with roommates. Despite this rise, shared housing is little researched. Roommates are a fairly common point of reference in Western culture. In the United States, most young adults spend at least a short part of their lives living with roommates after they leave their family's home. Very often this involves moving out of the home and to college, where the primary option for living is with a roommate. Therefore, many novels, movies, plays, and television programs employ roommates as a basic principle or a
plot device A plot device or plot mechanism is any technique in a narrative used to move the plot forward. A clichéd plot device may annoy the reader and a contrived or arbitrary device may confuse the reader, causing a loss of the suspension of disbelief ...
(such as the popular series ''
Friends ''Friends'' is an American television sitcom created by David Crane (producer), David Crane and Marta Kauffman, which aired on NBC from September 22, 1994, to May 6, 2004, lasting List of Friends episodes, ten seasons. With an ensemble cast ...
'' or ''
The Big Bang Theory ''The Big Bang Theory'' is an American television sitcom created by Chuck Lorre and Bill Prady for CBS. It aired from September 24, 2007, to May 16, 2019, running for 12 seasons and 279 episodes. The show originally centered on five charact ...
''). Sharing a house or a flat is also very common in European countries such as France (French ''colocation'', corenting) or Germany (German ''WG'' for ''Wohngemeinschaft'', living ogethercommunity). Many websites are specialized in finding a flatmate. On the other hand, it is less common for people of any age to live with roommates in some countries, such as
Japan Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asia, Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea ...
, where single-person one-room apartments are plentiful. There are many different forms of flat shares also, from the more established flat shares where the flatmate will get their own room that is furnished to "couch surfing" where people lend their sofa for a short period. Sharehome residents are typically unrelated to each other in that they generally come from different
families Family (from ) is a group of people related either by consanguinity (by recognized birth) or affinity (by marriage or other relationship). It forms the basis for social order. Ideally, families offer predictability, structure, and safety as ...
, although they may be composed of some
sibling A sibling is a relative that shares at least one parent with the other person. A male sibling is a brother, and a female sibling is a sister. A person with no siblings is an only child. While some circumstances can cause siblings to be raised ...
s and sometimes
single parent A single parent is a person who has a child or children but does not have a spouse or live-in partner to assist in the upbringing or support of the child. Reasons for becoming a single parent include death, divorce, break-up, abandonment, bec ...
s and their
children A child () is a human being between the stages of childbirth, birth and puberty, or between the Development of the human body, developmental period of infancy and puberty. The term may also refer to an unborn human being. In English-speaking ...
. Perhaps because of the
social cohesion Group cohesiveness, also called group cohesion, social harmony or social cohesion, is the degree or strength of bonds linking members of a social group to one another and to the group as a whole. Although cohesion is a multi-faceted process, it ...
required for their formation, sharehomes will often be composed of members of the same
peer group In sociology, a peer group is both a social group and a primary group of people who have similar interests ( homophily), age, background, or social status. Members of peer groups are likely to influence each others' beliefs and behaviour. Durin ...
. For example,
university student A student is a person enrolled in a school or other educational institution, or more generally, a person who takes a special interest in a subject. In the United Kingdom and most commonwealth countries, a "student" attends a secondary school ...
s who have relocated to a new area to commence a course of study often need to form a sharehome. Share housing often occurs in the 18–35 age bracket—during a life stage between leaving home and having children. Sharehome residents may have pre-existing
friendship Friendship is a Interpersonal relationship, relationship of mutual affection between people. It is a stronger form of interpersonal bond than an "acquaintance" or an "association", such as a classmate, neighbor, coworker, or colleague. Althoug ...
s or other
interpersonal relationship In social psychology, an interpersonal relation (or interpersonal relationship) describes a social association, connection, or affiliation between two or more people. It overlaps significantly with the concept of social relations, which a ...
s or they may form new relationships whilst living together. Many
universities A university () is an educational institution, institution of tertiary education and research which awards academic degrees in several Discipline (academia), academic disciplines. ''University'' is derived from the Latin phrase , which roughly ...
in the United States require first-year students to live in on-campus residence halls, sharing a
dormitory A dormitory (originated from the Latin word ''dormitorium'', often abbreviated to dorm), also known as a hall of residence, a residence hall (often abbreviated to halls), or a hostel, is a building primarily providing sleeping and residential qu ...
room with a same-sex roommate.


Popularity

According to the
American Community Survey The American Community Survey (ACS) is an annual demographics survey program conducted by the United States Census Bureau. It regularly gathers information previously contained only in the long form of the United States census, decennial census ...
, 7.7% of Americans lived with a roommate in 2014. From 2000 to 2014, the proportion of Americans living with roommates increased by 13%, revealing that it is an increasingly common housing situation. The change in the cost of housing makes the consideration of roommates more attractive. As housing costs rise, so too does the rate of living as roommates. When prices drop, the opposite can be expected. This has been seen extensively in cities such as Washington D.C., Phoenix, and San Diego.
Student exchange ''Student Exchange'' is a 1987 American television film, made-for-television comedy film directed by Mollie Miller and produced by Walt Disney Television. It originally aired November 29, 1987 as a presentation of ''Walt Disney anthology telev ...
s are getting more and more popular with globalization and has influenced a lot in the Roommate Boom. The Erasmus exchange program in
Europe Europe is a continent located entirely in the Northern Hemisphere and mostly in the Eastern Hemisphere. It is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, the Mediterranean Sea to the south, and Asia to the east ...
has contributed as being the biggest exchange program in Europe. Exchange students can live in university residences but a growing number want to share apartments with other international students in shared apartments. Roommates and house-sharing are not limited to students and young adults however. American politicians
Chuck Schumer Charles Ellis Schumer ( ; born November 23, 1950) is an American politician serving as the Seniority in the United States Senate, senior United States Senate, United States senator from New York (state), New York, a seat he has held since 1999. ...
, William Delahunt, Richard Durbin, and George Miller famously share a house in
Washington, D.C. Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly known as Washington or D.C., is the capital city and federal district of the United States. The city is on the Potomac River, across from Virginia, and shares land borders with ...
, while Congress is in session. In
India India, officially the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-largest country by area; the List of countries by population (United Nations), most populous country since ...
n universities and colleges it is quite common that students share their rooms with a couple of others. Usually students in the master or doctoral programs are allocated with own rooms. Sharing an apartment is quite popular with young adults (most of them university students) in countries like
Germany Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south. Its sixteen States of Germany, constituent states have a total popu ...
,
Austria Austria, formally the Republic of Austria, is a landlocked country in Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine Federal states of Austria, states, of which the capital Vienna is the List of largest cities in Aust ...
and
Switzerland Switzerland, officially the Swiss Confederation, is a landlocked country located in west-central Europe. It is bordered by Italy to the south, France to the west, Germany to the north, and Austria and Liechtenstein to the east. Switzerland ...
, while sharing a bedroom is more uncommon.


Cities with most roommates in the United States

The following table lists the top 25 US cities by proportion of people who live with roommates according to the
US Census The United States census (plural censuses or census) is a census that is legally mandated by the Constitution of the United States. It takes place every ten years. The first census after the American Revolution was taken in 1790 under Secretar ...
2016 and a 2017
Zillow Zillow Group, Inc., or simply Zillow, is an American tech real-estate marketplace company that was founded in 2006 by co-executive chairmen Rich Barton and Lloyd Frink, former Microsoft executives and founders of Microsoft spin-off Expedia; Spen ...
housing trends report.


Challenges

One difficulty is finding suitable roommates. Living with a roommate can mean much less
privacy Privacy (, ) is the ability of an individual or group to seclude themselves or information about themselves, and thereby express themselves selectively. The domain of privacy partially overlaps with security, which can include the concepts of a ...
than having a residence of one's own, and for some people this can cause a lot of stress. Another thing to consider when choosing a roommate is how to divide the cost of living. Who pays for what, or are the shared expenses divided between the two or more roommates. Also, the potential roommate should be trusted to pay their share and trusted to pay it on time. Sleeping patterns can also be disrupted when living with a number of people. Some of the challenges that come with share housing may include advertising for, interviewing and choosing potential housemates; sharing communal household goods,
rent Rent may refer to: Economics *Renting, an agreement where a payment is made for the temporary use of a good, service or property *Economic rent, any payment in excess of the cost of production *Rent-seeking, attempting to increase one's share of e ...
(often this may be determined by the size or position of respective
bedroom A bedroom or bedchamber is a room situated within a residential or accommodation unit characterized by its usage for sleeping. A typical Western world, western bedroom contains as bedroom furniture one or two beds, a clothes closet, and bedsid ...
s); sharing
household A household consists of one or more persons who live in the same dwelling. It may be of a single family or another type of person group. The household is the basic unit of analysis in many social, microeconomic and government models, and is im ...
bills and
grocery A grocery store (American English, AE), grocery shop or grocer's shop (British English, BE) or simply grocery is a retail store that primarily retails a general range of food Product (business), products, which may be Fresh food, fresh or Food p ...
costs; and sharing housework,
cleaning Cleaning is the process of removing unwanted substances, such as dirt, infectious agents, and other impurities, from an object or environment. Cleaning is often performed for beauty, aesthetic, hygiene, hygienic, Function (engineering), function ...
, and
cooking Cooking, also known as cookery or professionally as the culinary arts, is the art, science and craft of using heat to make food more palatable, digestible, nutritious, or Food safety, safe. Cooking techniques and ingredients vary widely, from ...
responsibilities. Conflicts may arise if, for example, residents have different standards of
cleanliness Cleanliness is both the state of being clean and free from Germ (microorganism), germs, dirt, Trash (garbage), trash, or waste, and the habit of achieving and maintaining that state. Cleanliness is often achieved through cleaning. Culturally, cl ...
, different
diets The Low Countries comprise the coastal Rhine–Meuse–Scheldt delta region in Western Europe, whose definition usually includes the modern countries of Luxembourg, Belgium, the Netherlands and parts of Northern France. Both Belgium and the ...
, or different hours of
employment Employment is a relationship between two party (law), parties Regulation, regulating the provision of paid Labour (human activity), labour services. Usually based on a employment contract, contract, one party, the employer, which might be a cor ...
or study. Guests and partners may also begin to board frequently, which can raise complications pertaining to utility expenses, additional rent and further possible cleaning duties. Often when these responsibilities go untended, friction may result between co-tenants. For this reason, responsibilities should be delegated and fairly assigned as early as possible in any living arrangement with roommates. A clear and defined list of alternating chores and bill lists are easy to see and enforce. Roommates matter, as they have a great impression upon the ones whom they live with and therefore surround themselves by. More and more research has been produced in order to properly understand this impact. The areas of impact can vary greatly in both positive and negative ways; most important is that individuals should be aware of the possible behaviour and social changes that may happen when living with a roommate.


Eating and drinking habits

Living with an individual who exercises and diets can be beneficial because it very often "rubs off" on the other roommates, while a calorie cutting roommate could be a potential negative influence. College is a time that students often start drinking, specifically binge drinking (more than 4 or 5 drinks in a row). By the end of second semester in college 53% of freshman students had binged. Students explained that having a drinking roommate provided a “buddy” to go through it all and was a big influence in the decision to do so. Mood susceptible: "Each happy friend a person has increases that person's probability of being happy by 9 percent and each unhappy friend decreases it by 7 percent," says Nicholas A. Christakis, a co-author of "Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives". Whether the roommates are friends or not the interactions and behaviors shared and expressed will undoubtedly have an effect on the roommates. Although shown not to be as impressionable as eating habits, our moods can change, specifically more in roommates based on the others emotions. Effects on studies: Studies showed that having a roommate that plays video games causes the other to most likely participate, which reflected in a half-hour less of studying, also showing GPA's .02 lower than others. When dealing with a college roommate the choice to study or sleep should take precedence over the choice to party or play loud music. This understanding allows those to choose to focus differently on school to do so without harm to the roommate relationship or grades. Addressing an issue: The best approach to address an issue with a roommate is an upfront and in person conversation, preferably a one on one conversation. While approaching the issues understand and respect each other's differences. When discussing the issues allow both sides to express their thoughts and feelings on the issue. And after both listening and speaking to each other present a resolution. and in doing so create a win-win situation this allows for the conflict to be more easily resolved. The resolution may not be the personal idea, but it should help the situation to some degree.


See also

*
Co-living Co-living is a residential community living model that accommodates three or more biologically unrelated people living in the same dwelling unit. Coliving has seen a noticeable increase in popularity in recent years globally, concentrated in area ...
*
Cohabitation Cohabitation is an arrangement where people who are not legally married live together as a couple. They are often involved in a Romance (love), romantic or Sexual intercourse, sexually intimate relationship on a long-term or permanent basis. ...
*
Communal apartment Communal apartments (, colloquial: ''kommunalka'') are apartments in which several unrelated persons or families live in isolated living rooms and share common areas such a kitchen, shower, and toilet. When the Bolsheviks came to power in 1917 aft ...
*
Family Family (from ) is a Social group, group of people related either by consanguinity (by recognized birth) or Affinity (law), affinity (by marriage or other relationship). It forms the basis for social order. Ideally, families offer predictabili ...
*
Home A home, or domicile, is a space used as a permanent or semi-permanent residence for one or more human occupants, and sometimes various companion animals. Homes provide sheltered spaces, for instance rooms, where domestic activity can be p ...
*
Household A household consists of one or more persons who live in the same dwelling. It may be of a single family or another type of person group. The household is the basic unit of analysis in many social, microeconomic and government models, and is im ...
* Stable roommates problem * Tenant


References


External links

{{Use dmy dates, date=December 2020 Student culture Living arrangements Interpersonal relationships Family economics de:Wohngemeinschaft