We went viral for being single moms cohousing together. Things fell apart, and these are lessons I've learned from breaking up a cohousing community.
Courtesy of Holly Harper
- I'm a single mom of one. I bought a four-unit building with two other single moms as investors.
- The Siren House was intended to help us build equity and share the burdens of homeownership.
- Cohousing has changed my life forever; including what happened when things started to fall apart.
I was able to become a post-divorce homeowner through cohousing. Another single mom and I purchased a four-unit apartment building in 2020, and a third woman joined the investment as a co-owner in 2021. We had financial perks and thriving kids.
When The Siren House went viral, the response was overwhelmingly positive. Many people asked for more personal and practical details. There were some who questioned the drawbacks and others who wanted to know what would happen if one of us decided to leave.
Well, it happened, and it wasn't pretty.
The handshake arrangement protected us from financial harm, but not heartbreak
My original cohousing partner and I have known one another since 2016. We knew from our long friendship that we had to approach cohousing with formal agreements.
We ensured our values aligned, and I immediately wrote our official manifesto to guide us through conflict. My co-investor worked to ensure our legal documents were in order.
In early 2021, we offered a rent-to-own option to one of our tenants. She accepted, and the co-tenancy arrangement now informally included her buy-in terms.
Fast forward to mid-2022, and she wanted out. By June, we weren't speaking on a face-to-face basis. By July things were outright toxic.
We all made mistakes, learned lessons, and walked away with scars
We all agreed that if one of us wanted to end the arrangement, we would cross that bridge if it came, using our manifesto and legal documents to guide us. As divorced women, we intimately know that nothing is permanent and prenups, parenting agreements, and contracts are critical to protecting our assets and our children.
Divorce also gave us the understanding that we would survive a breakup, and probably come out the other side stronger for having experienced it.
I live my life at light speed, processing information and making decisions based on my instincts. When I am stressed or anxious, I make rushed decisions that lead to unforced errors.
We moved too fast
We all moved into The Siren House in the summer of 2020. I know now that I should have waited four seasons to offer the basement tenant a rent-to-own option. Over the course of a year, I would have been able to get to know her better and understand her struggles and stresses without tying them to my own.
Speaking of too much, too soon: We also decided to start a small business together.
Looking back, I know that if I'd waited for four seasons to offer the buy-in, our personal and business relationships would look different.
We all would have been better able to support one another if we didn't have a new home, new business, new romantic partners, new jobs, and other huge life-altering things happening simultaneously.
Understand and heal financial trauma
The ultimate reason for the breakup was financial stress. All three of the investors in our property have some sort of financial trauma, and I dramatically underestimated the impact it would have when things got hard.
The food-service business we started was designed to provide income to the owner. We all understood the high rate of failure for food businesses and made a six-month plan. When the business didn't create the returns needed to sustain itself and provide income, the pressure mounted on all of us.
In the early spring of 2022, just as our cohousing story went viral, we learned that the business was insolvent and had significant debts.
This revelation sent me through the roof with anger at the time. I was triggered. I did not understand why people were making decisions that, to me, clearly violated the values in our manifesto.
I found her behavior to be lying by omission, violating transparency. My partner found my behavior to be patronizing and controlling.
Underneath it all, none of us had a clear understanding of our individual financial trauma at the beginning. That opacity created the resentment — on all three sides — that prevented us from collaborating on decision-making around money.
Set firm boundaries in your relationships
Because all of us at The Siren House are good humans carrying financial trauma, emotional trauma, and facing myriad stressors in our lives, we resolved this situation with anger, resentment, discomfort, and pain — but not legal action.
She moved out. She released the two remaining members of the business of any liability for business debt.
I will continue to practice healing my financial trauma and being clear and fair when stating my needs and boundaries. And they will get that time to assess my role in their lives as well.
Clarity, shared understanding, and explicit commitments create structures of accountability that help people collaborate and make better decisions. I know this through business consulting and my relationship with the original investor in The Siren House. It is up to me to slow down, observe, and learn moving forward so I don't repeat my mistakes as we open our home to the next tenant.
Holly Harper is the founder of Anagram Consulting, Blue Bike Communications, and Siren Foundry. She is a management consultant, philosopher, and sociologist, and author of the book "The Deal of the Dollhouse: How Toxic Self Care Nearly Destroyed Me."