Sharing space across generations
In addition to their efforts to raise the standard of rental services, as they have grown older the 9floor team have begun to focus on trying to bring generations together in their shared living spaces.
“In the past most older apartment buildings didn’t have elevators, and so as people grew older and became less mobile, they would choose to move out,” says Ke, as he talks about several private housing projects he’s taken on in recent years.
Take the area around National Taipei University’s Sanxia campus, for example. At the invitation of the New Taipei City Government, 9floor took on the work of renovating a space more than 165 square meters in size. They converted it into a shared living space for ten people both young and old, the first time they had tried this cross-generational approach. They consulted with groups like the Homemakers United Federation and the Association of Retired Persons to get a better understanding of elderly people’s needs.
To help break the ice between these residents of different generations, 9floor organized various activities to bring everyone together, hoping to help each side better understand the other.
With such moves, one could consider modern co-living spaces to be quite similar to traditional Hakka roundhouses and other Han Chinese clan compounds. The biggest difference, though, is that the residents of these spaces aren’t related to one another. Despite this, through shared attitudes and values, they can form ties even closer than blood relationships.
With Taiwan facing low birthrates and a contracting, increasingly elderly population, co-living spaces represent a way for older people to potentially enjoy happy lives even without partners or children. Maybe this is what Spencer Ke is talking about when he says that his greatest sense of accomplishment in this venture comes from “seeing everyone smile.”
Rent a room, and rent a lifestyle too.
Rent a room, and rent a lifestyle too.