All 13 of us dressed in our finest evening wear for a night at the ballet. We sipped sparkling cider and mingled before the show, catching one another’s eyes beneath magnificent hats. A tuxedo-clad usher collected our tickets, and we filed inside, taking our seats. Some balanced tiny binoculars on their noses, and others cheered loudly as the curtain rose for A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
But the ballet was being livestreamed via YouTube and projected onto a screen; the theater seats, our own couch cushions. The usher at the entrance? One of my housemates, accepting homemade tickets we’d printed on computer paper. It was April 2020, in the thick of the pandemic, yet another evening in my communal home as we found creative ways to entertain ourselves.
This article appears in Issue 36 of Alta Journal.
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When COVID-19 crossed the threshold from distant news headlines to daily life, my 12 housemates and I nervously joked that we’d found ourselves in the best-case worst-case scenario. I’d been living at the Avalon, a communal home in San Francisco’s Mission district, for nearly four years. If we were going to be locked down, it might as well be within the four walls of an ornate Victorian mansion. And if we were going to be mired in anxiety and uncertainty, with no foreseeable relief, we might as well face the unknown as a giant, unlikely family.
I’d moved in to the Avalon in the fall of 2016, after a disastrous exit from a disorganized 75-person eco-village in the Panamanian jungle, where my depression and drug habits had blossomed into an unmanageable crisis. After a particularly grueling rainy season, I boarded a one-way flight to San Francisco, the closest approximation to “home,” so I could access the care I needed. My mother, who lived in Oakland, opened her guest-bedroom door to me and my tattered suitcase.
With zero job prospects, a climbing credit card bill, and nowhere to live besides my mom’s condo, I set out to rebuild my life in the Bay Area. I’d spent a significant chunk of adulthood in San Francisco and was grateful for unlimited quality time with my closest friend. For the past several years, she’d been living at the Avalon, which she’d cofounded with a group of pals looking for a creative solution to the housing crisis and an inspiring, high-octane living environment.
Communal living is not an unfamiliar concept in San Francisco: Joan Didion chronicled the rise of the modern commune in Slouching Towards Bethlehem more than half a century ago. The Avalon was born out of a coliving renaissance in the early 2010s, which hummed with a sense of economic optimism and millennial invincibility. During that era, clusters of dreamers and techies and dreamer-techies pooled their resources and energy to create shared homes. Some had themes and catchy names, others garnered media attention, and some even tried to glom on to the startup scene.
As I began cobbling together housing and employment opportunities in San Francisco, my best friend told me about a sublet opening up at the Avalon. Rooms were in high demand at the time, and the house had a long waiting list of prospective tenants. She’d quietly bumped my name to the top of the heap.
“No, thanks,” I told her, thinking of my chaotic Panamanian experiment. “I’m never living in community again. And I couldn’t even afford it if I wanted to.”
“Too late,” she replied. “I already paid your first month’s rent.”
She convinced me to stay for 30 days while I found my footing. One month turned into seven years.
The Well-Oiled Commune
In sharp contrast to my unruly eco-community in Panama, the Avalon was a master class in harmonious coliving. Within weeks, I’d nicknamed it “the well-oiled commune.” The house felt less like an adult dorm and more like a container for a colorful, self-selected family. Residents, who ranged in ages from mid-20s to mid-40s, shared groceries and chores, dined together every Monday night, supported one another through pitfalls, and celebrated one another’s triumphs. Upon moving in, I was required to sign a shared “vision and values” agreement that the Avalon’s founding members had painstakingly crafted.
This well-oiled commune turned out to be the most important foundation of my 30s. When I moved in, my severe depression was still a persistent and debilitating companion; I often sequestered myself in my room, burrowing under the covers and listening to the bustling activity outside my door. But even amid the crippling fog of mental illness, I found that the house provided rhythm, consistency, and opportunities to engage: I helped transform the rooms for our legendary annual Halloween party, dragged myself to the dinner table every Monday, and participated in “Conscious Leadership Group,” a full-day conflict resolution workshop. While my best friend moved out of the Avalon a year after I joined, she remains one of the most important people in my life. I even told the story of her sneaky maneuver to bring me into the house during my maid of honor speech at her wedding.
Eventually, residential rehab—and subsequent sobriety—released me from the grips of my own mind. As I began to explore recovery in earnest, I realized that the community I’d cultivated during my struggles was right there waiting to keep me steady as I got well. I could rely on my chosen family if I gave myself permission to receive their support. My commitment to sobriety, coupled with my place in the Avalon, helped reinforce a now long-standing belief that for me, community and recovery are inextricably connected.
Another half decade passed at the Avalon. I became known for sipping morning tea on the roof while scribbling in my journal, instigating late-night dance parties in the kitchen, and hosting weekly writing workshops for friends and acquaintances.
Weathering the pandemic in a communal house meant constantly devising imaginative ways to keep ourselves entertained. In addition to our fancy night at the “ballet,” we transformed the kitchen into a barista-operated café, competed in nightly Balderdash tournaments, roasted marshmallows over bonfires in the yard, and even hosted a housemates-only iteration of our cherished Halloween party. The world eventually melted back into some version of normal, and within the confines of my beloved shared home, I managed to raise a puppy, write a book, and continue investing in my recovery.
As someone who never wanted my own children or envisioned being part of a small nuclear family, I found the house cracked open a way of being that brought out my best self. My time at the Avalon became a blueprint for how I wanted to design the rest of my life. A living situation that fostered openness, curiosity, and connection—no matter how unconventional—served me better than the traditional frameworks constructed to uphold wider societal norms.
If psychologists are correct in their assertion that belonging is among the most fundamental human needs, I’d made it to the top of Maslow’s pyramid. My Avalon housemates allowed me to be seen, over time, for who I truly was.
PLATONIC PARTNERSHIP
Topher moved in to the Avalon in 2023, and we connected almost instantly. Our fiery intellectual and emotional attraction led to multiple all-nighters on the kitchen couch, talking so feverishly that neither of us even paused to use the bathroom. I’d never met anyone else who shared my wonky interest in San Francisco politics, and I loved hearing about his idiosyncratic passions for experimental theater and public transportation networks. We traded books and writing tips and spontaneously broke into song and spoke in funny voices together.
Since Topher is an attractive man who’s attracted to women, we initially mistook our bond for a romantic connection. But several honest conversations and one mismatched kiss led us both to the conclusion that romance wasn’t our destiny. That didn’t make our relationship any less meaningful, though. A month or so later, I took him out to dinner and floated a new idea: What if we moved in together?
As much as I adored the Avalon, my time at the house was beginning to feel like it had run its course. I’d lived through at least two full turnovers of other residents. I craved the privacy of having my own bathroom and the freedom to spend less time mired in house logistics. San Francisco had emerged from the pandemic brighter and more full of possibility, and it seemed like an appropriate time to explore something new.
I also knew that after such an abundant, expansive experience with a chosen family, I wasn’t wired for solitude. Rather than swap one life for its polar opposite, I decided that a pared-down version of communal living—cultivating a new home with a dear friend—might serve me well.
Topher accepted my proposal of platonic domestic partnership, and we found an airy, light-filled flat in the Mission along the 24th Street corridor, about seven blocks southeast of the Avalon. A few months after we moved in, the unit downstairs opened up, and we persuaded another Avalon alum to take it. Today, we share a big backyard with fruit trees, and each unit has a garden box (since Topher and I only know how to grow abandoned weeds, our downstairs neighbor takes care of both). We keep keys to each other’s apartments for emergencies, and emergencies include spontaneous movie nights and last-minute coworking sessions.
I’ve settled more deeply into the Mission, too. Healthy communities require two-way relationships, and I didn’t want to just take from a neighborhood that had given me so much. A few years ago, I began working with Roberto Hernandez, a local organizer who’s advocated on behalf of Mission residents for more than 50 years and trained under Dolores Huerta and other organizers as a teenager. Roberto has taught me that belonging to a place means so much more than simply living inside it.
I recently joined the fundraising committee of a healing arts center that Roberto is in the process of building. Over the holidays, he and his wife hosted a toy drive for local immigrant families in the space, and I stopped by to help out. They needed someone to dress up as Santa Claus and pose for photos with the kids. Stuffing a pillow up my shirt and strapping a white beard under my chin, I perched in front of the Christmas tree and wished every child a happy holiday individually. Sharing a moment of joy with each of them felt like the whole point of living here. I walked home that night with tears in my eyes.
Over the years, I’ve deliberately formed my own definition of family. I share the duties of running a household with Topher. When I’m craving the company of children, I fly to Santa Barbara and thrash around with my nephews until I’m exhausted and ready to return them to their parents. I hike in the redwoods with my mom, who still lives just across the Bay Bridge, and our dogs. I exchange recipes and political hot takes and anxious ruminations on a text thread with my two closest friends, which buzzes with our hopes and dreams and recent vintage shopping finds all day long.
Our wider culture over-indexes on marriage and family as a success metric: the answers to those essential human questions of how to be known, feel held, and matter to someone over time. Those are real answers, but they’re not the only ones. I’m 41, child-free, and renting an apartment without a white picket fence in sight. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.•
Carly Schwartz is the former editor in chief of the San Francisco Examiner and the author of the memoir I’ll Try Anything Twice: Misadventures of a Self-Medicated Life.
