On Local Matters this week, we talk about flatsharing. In our neighboring countries, flatsharing has a huge tradition, particularly in the cities with old universities. Three or four people live together in apartments, each one having his or her own room, but kitchens and living rooms are shared spaces, and become a meeting point for this small housing community. In Luxembourg, the university is still very young, and even the fast growth of the population is a relatively recent phenomenon, there was no need for shared flats. While traditions and social structures such as housing communities need time to grow, commercial actors adapt much faster to existing needs. Flatsharing has become commercialised in the past years. Large firms offer single rooms in flats shared with up to ten people, that aren’t conceived to facilitate social interaction, but to maximise the land lord’s profits.
In other countries, students make their first friends in the new city within their flats, they learn how to adapt to others by fighting over issues like cleaning and setting up a working wifi connection, and they grow together by carrying furniture for the shared spaces on the fourth floor. In Luxembourg coliving is often much more impersonal, no need for fighting because cleaning personal is included in the rent, furniture is there, and wifi just works. It is also much more expensive. For a single room, people pay up to 1000 euros per month. In our interview today, Ben George Coles talks to Miguel Ortiz about his housing situation. For 6 months, Miguel lived in an overcrowded, surveilled and avariciously managed flatshare in Merl.