Every field of study has some jargon or specific word meanings. These definitions can give you some clarity about terms related to but not quite the same as residential intentional community. This page also helps clarify who this site seeks to serve.
Intentional Community Means Residential and Purposeful
Intentional community (IC), to people within this movement, is defined broadly as people having a common purpose for living with or near each other. This can include intense involvement such as income-sharing communes that have daily meals together. On the other extreme, co-housing apartments or co-owned land could allow for much less involvement, such as living separately in single-family houses as neighbors. But these ICs are bound by more than simply homeowners’ association agreements.
Intentional community means more than making friends with whoever are your neighbors by chance. To be an IC means the members chose the housing development based on shared values or purpose such as ecological preservation. The term usually implies periodically taking part in the governance process about the site. There may be minimal social involvement, perhaps only a periodic optional potluck. Still, in an IC you choose your neighbors, housemates, or roommates with the intention of joining a defined group. You might not always get a say about exactly who else becomes a member of the community, but there is a known vetting process that’s more than their credit score. This site often uses the term residential intentional community, to clearly differentiate ICs from online gatherings based on common interests.
Join a Household as a Trial Run or Work-trade
Household: Our use is similar to the tax code meaning. For ICmatch profile purposes, “you and your household” indicates people who, when they next move, will likely move as a unit. Members of a household typically consider each other family or life partners.
You may be a family looking to add one or two members with shared values to your household. If you commit to treat them fairly, whether they rent or contribute thru labor, we support that. For some needs it’s hard to find a service to match you. You may want to help someone in need who would provide a sense of security and companionship in exchange for little to no rent. If you are looking for childcare or eldercare helpers who you would consider an essential long-term part of your household that is more than a transactional relationship, we’d love to help you find a good fit. You could use typical employment services, but with those you can’t ask some questions, such as about religion, which may be important and relevant to living in harmony together. See the Terms of Use and Safety Precautions for descriptions of authorized and unauthorized uses of this website.
Ambiguous Situations
It isn’t clear what to call some situations: (a) roommates who share common interests and met thru a matching service, (b) work-trade participants staying in the same guest house, (c) theme-based college dorms where a shared purpose includes learning, shared culture, and planned interaction among residents, or (d) bringing in several older or aged-out foster children partly as a job and partly a labor of love. The structure of the living situation is less important than the intention of sharing resources, the desire for friendship and caring, and sharing decision-making. Where those last three are present, we aim to help.
Not Our Focus: Corporate-owned Coliving
Coliving is generally recognized as rentals owned by a business entity, housing two or more renters in the same residence, with at least one not legally defined as family or a dependant. Often these situations are month-to-month rentals in city apartments where renters have their own room, possibly their own bathroom, and share a kitchen and living areas. These often target young adults who have temporary work assignments or can work from anywhere.
The term coliving could also apply to a room rental from an Airbnb host, even if the host lives on site, because a corporation acts as the intermediary. The main point is that renters don’t choose or get any say about who else rents. A long term hostel could qualify as co-living even if owned by an individual, because the sharing has primarily a transactional purpose. A main purpose is to keep housing costs lower, even if residents enjoy some degree of planned interaction. Coliving residents might become friends, but they lack a shared purpose or much choice about who else lives there.
Not Our Focus: Religious Communes Without Shared Governance Agreements
This website is not set up to support autocratic religious communities. A monastery (with a beneficial purpose) or religious cult (which more often brings out predictable problematic human failures) could be considered intentional communities, but these groups typically use their own resources for recruitment. This website connects people for partnerships and communities with at least some level of group governance.
Not Our Focus: Fraternity and Sorority Houses
Another common traditional coliving situation is a sorority or fraternity house. The residents usually share a common background, and they have a common purpose of college attendance and even a traditional type of service project they may be known for doing once per semester. Sorority or fraternity houses might meet the technical definitions of coliving and intentional community, yet they aren’t governed in an egalitarian manner. These situations may offer a good fit for you, but these institutions are well established. They don’t need the help of ICmatch to find members.
Not Our Focus: Finding Renters
Boarding houses were once common as lower-cost rentals, but those who considered the residents to be an inferior quality of neighbor changed laws to prohibit boarding. Some municipalities recognize that zoning neighborhoods or an entire city for only single-family units limits the ability of property owners to add on rentable units. It’s an important goal to increase affordable housing by opening up new legal structures. ICs may have an pro-social goal of affordable housing. However purely transactional agreements are not the focus of ICmatch. Standard tenant/landlord legal agreements govern them. ICmatch focuses on self-governance agreements.
Not Our Focus: Revillaging
Yves Smith writes that revillaging is a term that can cover a wide variety of intentions and actions. Revillaging includes reconstructing public urban gathering spaces for work and socializing. It includes making sure all of the needs of a given resident can be met within a walkable distance including school and work. It includes accepting interdependence as a value. While we love all that, we aren’t set up for that. We encourage you to jump into transition town projects and other local resource sharing described in our page that includes Neighborhood Mutual Aid.