00:00:07:06 - 00:00:40:05
Marnie
Hi, I'm Marnie and welcome to Dwelling. Speaking about housing, home and property, it often feels personal, private. But housing is something that's becoming increasingly isolating. Living in boxes separate from the rest of society. But it doesn't need to be that way. So over the final two episodes of this series, we're going to be exploring the ways in which groups of strangers create home together through communal living.

00:00:40:19 - 00:00:57:03
Marnie
And in this episode, we're taking a step back in time to an age of hippies, rock and roll, and what life was like in the largest commune in England, to an island in the Thames with magic mud.

00:01:00:02 - 00:01:04:23
Marnie
When you think of home, what do you think of home?

00:01:05:01 - 00:01:06:23
Robin
I've never been asked that before. Home.

00:01:09:10 - 00:01:27:14
Robin
I suppose somewhere for me... Somewhere I feel I belong. I'm not out of place. And. Yeah, comfortable, and safe.

00:01:28:14 - 00:01:30:18
Woman
Hello? Oh, you're the interview person.

00:01:30:18 - 00:01:34:05
Robin
I'm... I'm the interviewed.

00:01:34:05 - 00:01:36:19
Woman
And very nice to see you again.

00:01:36:21 - 00:01:40:22
Woman
It's always cold when I see you. It was cold last time.

Marnie
I know. I must bring it with me.

00:01:41:24 - 00:01:42:05
Robin
Yes.

00:01:42:18 - 00:02:10:24
Marnie
I'm in Twickenham. Specifically in Eel Pie Island museum. It's a series of small rooms stuffed with music memorabilia, information on boatyards, and most interestingly, to me, a series of pictures of young people with long flowing hair lounging on a riverbank outside the rickety 19th century hotel. I am a firm believer that in order to understand what's happening now, you need to look back in time.

00:02:11:09 - 00:02:40:17
Marnie
Eel Pie Island was an inescapable research hole. As I peeled back each layer of its history, another fascination unveiled itself. The Rolling Stones once played every Wednesday. It was once a site for artists, affairs, a site of hedony, an escape. Rumoured to have been used by Henry the eighth to spend time with his mistresses, it got its name from the pies made from the eels that live in the surrounding muddy banks.

00:02:41:12 - 00:03:10:05
Marnie
A hotel was built in Victorian splendour with holiday makers rowing away from London to escape the hustle and bustle of the city. Residents started to move in and I wanted to know what was this tiny island like before the madness began. So on a chilly grey day, Delilah and I cycled along the banks of the river to Eel Island Museum to speak to Robin.

00:03:10:06 - 00:03:47:24
Robin
My name is Robin Hunter. I was brought up in Twickenham, but unfortunately we had to move when I was about three years old and we had to pack up quickly and find somewhere cheap to live. At the time, the cheapest place to live in Twickenham was on Eel Pie island because the buildings that were on there were basically summer chalets, never built to live in. The rumour was that they'd been built for the mistresses of some of the local businessmen and, you know, it was sort of mostly separated off no bridge to take the boat.

00:03:47:24 - 00:04:12:12
Marnie
Eel pie is in part interesting because of the way it's positioned. This tiny island in the Thames. The fact that it was once only accessible by boat and is now only reachable by a footbridge just wide enough for two people to pass, allowed for several experiments to take place there. Cut off from modern society, what was possible when you take away the outside world?

00:04:13:05 - 00:04:14:12
Marnie
What does home look like?

00:04:15:14 - 00:04:50:09
Robin
It was it was a great place in many ways. It was not a great place in other ways as well, because youhad to be aware of the tides the whole time because at high tide, the island would flood every high tide before the Thames flood barrier. And you had to catch the chain ferry which connected the island with the mainland, and it couldn't run at high tide or low tide.

00:04:50:09 - 00:05:11:15
Robin
So you had to either wait or get in your dinghy and row across. But then on the other hand, it was completely safe and full of water. So as a young child running around, gates were not usually closed. The other side of that is, though, because it was a very isolated place, so no mates could ever come back.

00:05:12:02 - 00:05:39:12
Robin
I think it had, I know it had an effect on on on my family and on me growing up in a little world. And it was it was very much a contained as a world, probably a more narrow cross-section of society, people who were happy in that sort of situation. Basically, people who wanted to be on their own.

00:05:39:12 - 00:06:14:15
Robin
And so there were some characters and yeah, that was interesting. There was a guy who had the the piece of land opposite us, and I mean, he was to me at the time, he looked like a fairground clown, that he had hair sticking out under a hat and clothes that not only were not fashionable, but were sort of a bit bizarre, which was quite amusing to a young child.

00:06:14:16 - 00:06:19:04
Robin
And yeah, so it all added to the colour of the island.

00:06:19:11 - 00:06:22:09
Marnie
By the time you left was the jazz club up and running?

00:06:22:09 - 00:06:45:24
Robin
The jazz club was yes but the rock part of it, if you like. The rock nights hadn't hadn't started. Blues nights, I suppose, originally. Yeah. I mean, certainly I remember seeing jazz musicians and followers sort of coming over on the ferry and and, and on the bridge, obviously, with the large numbers of them.

00:06:45:24 - 00:07:08:23
Marnie
And as the popularity of the jazz club increased, the magic mud shifted to welcome in a new era, the jazz morphed into rock and roll, providing a platform for the Rolling Stones, The Who and Pink Floyd. It also started to provide a home for a group of young people that society were leaving behind, or maybe young people that wanted to leave society behind.

00:07:09:10 - 00:07:43:24
Robin
Not all residents were totally happy about it because in the 1950s, the sort of long hair and the sort of slightly bohemian, very much bohemian clothing and lifestyle was yeah, not not sort of seen everywhere. And some people didn't like it.

00:07:45:03 - 00:08:22:03
Man (old radio voice)
Every Friday, Saturday, Sunday evening, winter and summer they come. In ones and twos then in droves, some from close at hand, but others are pilgrimage of incredible miles crossing the water to the island, paying a total of fourpence to the keeper at the bridge along the track through the trees a rubber stamped ticket in the anteroom of paradise.

00:08:22:03 - 00:08:47:22
Man (old radio voice)
Or indeed hell, depends who you are, how you look at things.

00:08:47:22 - 00:08:51:05
Canadian Chris
All right. Yes, yes, That's Marnie.

00:08:51:20 - 00:09:13:11
Marnie
Hi. When looking for information about eel pie, you come across a website, Eel pie dharma. A journal full of poetry by a guy called Canadian Chris. As his name suggests, he's Canadian and has since moved back. He doesn't have a computer, so we speaks over the phone. He's funny and unafraid of colorful language and graphic descriptions.

00:09:13:21 - 00:09:47:02
Canadian Chris
And that was just, you know, 19, 20 years old as an activist against the draft and against the Vietnam War. So I was obviously surveilled. There weren't really many hippies in Miami. I would have been one of the first people to grow their hair long. But I was I was more of a political really and an activist and, you know, had initially had short hair and and was middle class or lower middle class and.

00:09:47:13 - 00:10:10:02
Canadian Chris
And then I wanted I wanted to sort of wanted to be a hippie. And then and then the funny thing, you know, the irony that I ended up being almost like a super hippie, like the biggest commune and my hair just about down to my waist. And it's funny. And then I got three draft notices in a week in early June 1969.

00:10:11:01 - 00:10:34:12
Canadian Chris
My dad thought that would be a really good idea to go and stay with your cousin Nick. And they were just awful people. And then I went to stay with them, and then they kept sort of pushing me out the door and, you know, which is good, you know, fine by me. I went, I wanted to be a poet, and I was already publishing haiku poetry and stuff.

00:10:34:12 - 00:10:58:08
Canadian Chris
And and and my cousin and his wife literally threw me out in the street of Kingston upon Thames. And so I ended up sleeping on the Trinity Steam navigation, just this sort of semi derelict boat like it didn't have a motor or anything, and it was just moored on the other side of the river across on the Thames at Richmond, And just a whole bunch of us would sleep there every night.

00:10:58:17 - 00:11:32:23
Canadian Chris
I, I went to the Richmond paper cause some of the courses I took, I took, I think, three courses in journalism. And I was an English major and a writer, and I always wanted to be a writer and whatever. And I thought, well, maybe I could be a reporter for the Richmond paper. And I went in and there was a young guy that was sort of positive, and he said, you know, and, you know, but my hair is starting to grow, I was starting to look more like a hippie.

00:11:33:09 - 00:12:03:22
Canadian Chris
He said, Oh, there's a commune or something started down on Eel Pie Island. That can be your first assignment. Why don't you go investigate and write a story on it? So I got on the bus and got to Twickenham and went over the little arched footbridge to to the hotel, and it just looked so funky and countercultural and there was quilts everywhere. And Cliff was a cartoonist and an illustrator or whatever.

00:12:03:22 - 00:12:22:20
Canadian Chris
And there's Cliff's easel and magazines spread all over the place and you know, incense burning. It was just this funky cool thing and and started to sort of interview them. And they said, you know, sort of what was I all about. And I said, Well, I'm really a poet.

00:12:22:20 - 00:12:39:07
Canadian Chris
I'm not really a reporter. And they said, Would you like a room? You know, we need more artists. And that was that was that was part of why I was there, Eel Pie was the only place I could afford to live and have freedom.

00:12:40:02 - 00:12:43:17
Marnie
So how old were you out of interest when you joined Eel Pie?

00:12:44:23 - 00:12:45:23
Weed
I was 23.

00:12:45:24 - 00:12:49:12
Marnie
This is weed. And what was life like for you at that time?

00:12:50:20 - 00:13:12:23
Weed
I was without an address. I was wandering around, living as best I could, and I was enjoying myself basically, actually I'm not sure enjoying myself would be the right word. But I was fully engaged with life. I was taking lots of drugs and very involved with the drug culture and enjoying it immensely in that sense, but I was living hand-to-mouth. And I'd lived in group living situations before.

00:13:12:24 - 00:13:36:06
Weed
And so when I heard about it, I then immediately was sort of placed I wanted to know was interesting because at that age people seem very attuned to what is where the energy is, where the action is, even more so when you're 13, 14, 15 but even up to the ages of 20/25. You're still sort of aware of of the buzz of the energy, what was happening, what's exciting.

00:13:36:18 - 00:13:42:06
Weed
And as soon as I heard about it that I was aware that this was something that was worth investigating.

00:13:43:04 - 00:14:00:15
Marnie
The commune was started by Cliff Harper, an idealist, anarchic cartoonist. He wanted it to be a place where artists could come together and create free from the constraints of run a normal society. It was a form of squatting. The hotel was empty, so they moved in.

00:14:01:19 - 00:14:47:09
Canadian Chris
And he had he had envisioned the hotel being a, you know, this sort of hub of artists and revolutionaries. And Cliff was a bit of an anarchist and a cartoonist and he thought it would be a political centre. It was a real time of politics or just there was just this real youth sort of world wide youth movement that to some degree, Eel Pie became a very anarchic center of, but it never a lot of the people were just runaways.

00:14:47:16 - 00:15:11:14
Weed
But it was a very mixed community because I'd say people were being just sent there who got nowhere to live as well as also just lots of local people who needed somewhere to live, or people were attracted by the lifestyle or by the idealism of it. Originally, it started as an idealistic commune by the first two or three people, and I think that probably lasted probably a couple of days before it was overwhelmed by people with their different ideas and ideologies coming in.

00:15:11:20 - 00:15:15:20
Weed
But all the loosely bound was what might now because of a hippie mentality.

00:15:16:03 - 00:15:22:23
Marnie
Did it feel like you were making some sort of statement or a feeling of revolution within the commune?

00:15:23:15 - 00:15:52:14
Weed
Yes. Yes, I think so. I'm talking here for probably most of the people. I think those people there were aware that it was different, that it was special because it was so different, though at the time we weren't I don't think we were really aware that it was in inverted commas "the biggest commune in England" or whatever. This wasn't something, it wasn't it wasn't trying to be anything.

00:15:52:14 - 00:16:17:15
Weed
It evolved very organically, completely organically. There was no restrictions other than on the spur of the moment restrictions. There were no sort of rules laid down by anyone because who was going to lay the rules down? How are they going to be enforced? And that was again, very much down to Cliff Harper and the original three people, three or four people who actually first entered the building.

00:16:17:15 - 00:16:27:00
Weed
And from right from the start, they gave it a basis which allowed it to evolve as it was, even though it probably wasn't the way they expected it to go.

00:16:28:11 - 00:16:38:11
Marnie
If the commune is sounding chaotic, that's because it was. There were no rules. People could turn up and leave as they pleased. The numbers varied from 8 to 100.

00:16:39:09 - 00:17:01:22
Canadian Chris
And we would go out and get that temporary manpower jobs. And some of them went only last a day and you'd make like two and a half pounds or £3. But that would be almost enough to get food for a week because in the hotel we didn't have to pay rent or whatever. So it was very, very cheap living.

00:17:02:21 - 00:17:30:07
Canadian Chris
A lot of people would just stay up all night smoking dope and dropping acid and playing music. And some people, someone had a couple of people probably had portable record players and things and whatever. Just stay up all night and have sex or whatever and sleep in until like three or four in the afternoon and then a whole bunch of us would troop over to the Linton Café, just the other side of the footbridge.

00:17:30:20 - 00:17:53:19
Canadian Chris
And, and have our meal of the day and you could get two eggs I don't know probably. And sure we got bacon, two eggs and and toast there. Probably bacon. Oh, beans and beans, because beans are just really a lot of carbs and toast and a cup of tea and and that was really we would have like one meal a day.

00:17:54:19 - 00:18:12:20
Weed
Well, it's very difficult to say because everyone there have their own view of it. So I would like to give mine, but I wouldn't like it to think it was generalised to what other people what other people's days were like. I mean, some people worked. Not many. Some people had money from various places and a lot of people didn't have any money.

00:18:13:07 - 00:18:33:16
Weed
A general day was pretty lazy, I'd say, in terms of the people doing things. There was a lot of hanging about, a lot of guitar playing. There's a lot of conversations, a lot of smoking dope. There wasn't a lot of other drugs, it was mainly cannabis. And there was, I think, a lot of exploration of people.

00:18:33:16 - 00:19:06:11
Weed
It was mostly young people. I'd say the average age was probably 18 to 23, 24. And like most of organisations at that time anyway, I'd say it's probably a 2 to 1 ratio of male to female. But there was just a lot of conversation interactions at a personal level, and I think people are just exploring the concepts of being an environment which was unexpectedly strange but unexpectedly convenient for the way of life you wanted to live, which was no hassles from other people telling them what to do or how to behave.

00:19:06:21 - 00:19:14:02
Weed
So there's a lot more freedom given to people as to how they could be, which of course is good and bad, depending how much it interferes with the people.

00:19:15:17 - 00:19:21:11
Marnie
Did you get that sense of home and identity from each other or from the place?

00:19:21:20 - 00:19:45:01
Weed
Well, the place was so unusual. There was a definite culture which everyone there ascribed to, I think 99% people prescribed to it. It sounds silly, but in 1966, even if you had hair which didn't, which or even 65, but most people, if you had touched your ears, people would look at it as if you were somewhat strange. So to have people walking around with long hair

00:19:45:01 - 00:20:07:05
Weed
there was an immediate affinity and there was that. So there was a definite feeling of belongingness in terms of people. But it wasn't just the people. There was also a great community and there was also an identification with the place after a few months because you realise what amazing place it was. So for me it was an experience that I liked because at the time I was very much into the idea of experimental living and seeing what happened.

00:20:07:17 - 00:20:30:00
Weed
Not so much because I thought it was a good thing to do, but because there's so many constraints. At birth in the fifties where things were very different, where there was a much more where where I was brought up, there was a much more, much greater pressing from society as to how one should be. And one was a much more sort of a one was afraid of what the neighbours would say, basically all that sort of thing.

00:20:30:06 - 00:20:38:19
Weed
I was not into breaking rules for the sake of it, and yet a level I certainly wasn't breaking rules if I thought they were necessary just to see what would happen.

00:20:38:19 - 00:21:00:15
Marnie
Often thinking about the society that we just described somewhere that wouldn't hire you if your hair went past you, It is a culture of rigid conformity. Wouldn't there be a little part of you that was tempted to just drop out? I'm not saying that because 50 people spent six months getting stoned on an island with freeze, have long hair and get septum piercings today.

00:21:01:08 - 00:21:21:22
Marnie
But what I am saying is that it was part of a wider movement of freedom of expression, one that actually I think is crucial to feeling comfortable in wider society, being able to find belonging and spaces where you can find a culture or movement that suits you. LPA also paved the way for other movements. It fed into the possibility of communes and communal living.

00:21:22:02 - 00:21:27:00
Marnie
And as with any movement, you need a place to go. You need a place to call home.

00:21:27:21 - 00:21:54:00
Canadian Chris
One of the one of the things I really remember and maybe it was kind of the beginning of the end, but it was just so nice, was we had this great big Christmas dinner and Christmas of 1969 and one of the women, I think it was Anthea, I think she was pregnant and she went out and stole a turkey and put it under her her dress because I think it was already partially showing.

00:21:54:04 - 00:22:17:11
Canadian Chris
And then, you know, I guess though and there Challenger and and somehow she got it cooked and and we all sat on the floor There must've been 30 of us 35 of us and just sat around and eat ate turkey and got passed joints and and it was it was just really nice was just the communal feeling of here we are.

00:22:17:11 - 00:22:28:14
Canadian Chris
And we're we're all together and we're all in this one big, big room in the hotel. And instead of just all of us going our own ways and whatever it was, it was a nice a nice Christmas dinner.

00:22:30:06 - 00:22:48:17
Weed
And I'm talking about the time when there were probably between 20 and 40, well, 30 or 40 people, which in a way was the year in which most people to remember it as as it expanded over the following year, especially after some of the festivals, which brought a lot of people back into it. The numbers rise to 100 and then it broke a bit.

00:22:48:17 - 00:23:08:23
Weed
It tends to break up into groups or newcomers who weren't always welcome, shall we say, and then people scattered about in various parts. But when it gets to a hundred, then you get lots of divisions and it's very hard to sort of maintain that community feeling if it happens too fast. And this was happening over a period of days and weeks and months, suddenly numbers rising.

00:23:09:03 - 00:23:23:14
Canadian Chris
And after that, it just deteriorated into, I don't know, deteriorated even the right word, just into a just great big dust dancing house or whatever. Just crazy, you know, people just everywhere.

00:23:23:14 - 00:23:47:15
Weed
And there was I have to be honest, because it's easy to gloss over things and just follow a path. I think there's a lot of alienation there, partly because a lot of people turning up there had no idea what they were doing. The people are mentally disturbed. There was not a lot of diversity. There was certainly racial diversity.

00:23:47:15 - 00:24:19:14
Weed
A certain amount of national people from different countries because it was crushed by them. People were lost in countries. They're bringing their own ideas, their own experiences, and some of those are very valuable because some of them have been traveling a lot and seen a lot of things. So that added to the maturity of it. But there were also people just turning up there who were quite young, quite disturbed sometimes, and people who were there were quite affected by it, and one or two of them found it difficult to cope.

00:24:19:14 - 00:24:43:06
Weed
I went further into the trip than probably they should have done, you know, ended up sort of having to be taken away or calmed down or whatever. And there were a lot people that sort of as it got as it continued, there were people around the fringes who who just feeling probably be isolated. But again, it was probably less so than if they were somewhere else outside.

00:24:43:08 - 00:25:04:18
Weed
In an earlier interview, I once I was asked if it was misogynistic and I said yes, but I should have qualified it, saying it's far less so than the outside world. So yes, all the prejudices that were in society were also within the group, but they were far less so because people were actually where they were trying to break down those barriers and those those restrictions.

00:25:05:10 - 00:25:29:14
Marnie
A lot of conversations around housing and home center around this question of deserving whether or not people on benefits or unemployed or addicted deserve to be housed. I want to stress the LP was a real melting pot of people who just needed somewhere to stay. So some people had jobs, but lots didn't. And I think lots of people didn't fit into this category of what might be seen as deserving to be housed.

00:25:29:23 - 00:26:11:07
Marnie
And I think maybe that history looks back on Neil Pye and questions whether or not they deserve to have this place to get high and listen to music and explore a radical new style of living. Whether or not they deserved the kind of freedom they had, the kind of community. But I think that framing is all wrong. When there are empty houses, empty spaces or empty rock and roll hotels, when there are people excluded from society and housing by structures or fashion choices or whatever, the focus on an individual and whether or not they deserve home seems crazy to me, especially because a conventional home isn't right for everyone at every stage in their life.

00:26:12:07 - 00:26:16:12
Marnie
And sometimes home can just be freedom.

00:26:16:12 - 00:26:39:16
Weed
Oh yes. One positive moment. Have you got time for it? Yes. So the gardens in front of the hotel went straight, straight onto the river. And there's people who just dive off the edge of the end of the crest were railings where I was just diving first without near them, which at the time was not the best thing to do because the Thames wasn't very clean, but we were fairly high up there.

00:26:39:16 - 00:27:05:12
Weed
It wasn't too bad. And on that very hot day, it was some of that. Yeah. So it was when I came out and at the time sort of my closing was probably a pair of torn jeans and t shirt and I looked around and I couldn't see Leticia on my jeans and so many were. And then it hit me.

00:27:05:12 - 00:27:30:02
Weed
This was the first time in my life ever that I've been without anything at all, any possessions of any sort. Because at that time I was hadn't got a plate and opted for the room then because I wasn't living a partner and I was just and I hadn't got any money because what am I good bit of the jeans and I haven't got anything to hold onto the is just in my life before that.

00:27:30:03 - 00:27:39:21
Weed
It's quite an interesting feeling, just thinking I've got absolutely nothing. And then someone sat next to me, handed me a joint. It was just downhill from there.

00:27:39:21 - 00:28:09:02
Canadian Chris
It was just such an unusual aggregation of facilities. You know, you could, I think the Friday night and Saturday night there would be bands, so there'd be all these people coming over to the island and hanging out and and and then there were the people that were there is strictly from necessity. Like myself. I literally had nowhere to go.

00:28:09:02 - 00:28:34:05
Canadian Chris
And so it was just it was it was just a place where I could sleep and have some friends and a bit if it hadn't been this just confluence of this old abandoned hotel that we could live in. It was part of it was just that we could live in it. And and a lot of the people really weren't political.

00:28:34:17 - 00:29:19:13
Canadian Chris
It's hard to remember, Billy. You know, it's just 25 years after the end of World War Two. So there was still sort of poverty or still society was still sort of shaken up and the commune evolved or devolved to everyone. It took its own shape and nothing without the hope, the physical structure of the hotel and the sort of the magic of the island and and then the history of the steel pipe ballroom and the traditional jazz and and then the early rock and, you know, rock and roll and then the Rolling Stones playing there and just it was just as that at the hotel or on the island.

00:29:19:20 - 00:29:46:22
Canadian Chris
It was just this gathering of so many different influences. I don't know of any other commune or anything that it was so freeform and yet it was so central to, to, to the UK. I mean, it was on, you know, the western edge of London, England, you know, like one of the, one of the great cities of the world, you know, one of the world capitals.

00:29:46:22 - 00:30:02:09
Canadian Chris
And there's, there's this huge hippie calm in and yet it's all sort of dreamy and you mystical and whatever and yet impoverished. It was just going so many ways at the same time.

00:30:03:10 - 00:30:36:24
Weed
Something equivalent is inevitable looking back at the time, and it's very hard to tell without being objective and doing an academic survey, it seemed like there are far fewer restrictions on people in terms of the laws. Is it's almost like a reaction when it's not goes a certain way, then things will happen which react to it, whether that be something is quite convenient in terms of being close to London on an island with a derelict hotel is another matter.

00:30:37:13 - 00:30:59:04
Canadian Chris
It it sounds like the same problems exist there now that it existed, you know, 50 years ago with the homelessness and and lack of housing and stuff. Is that right?

00:30:59:04 - 00:31:23:00
Robin
And it absolutely intrigued me. The the hotel well, it was sort of faded elegance. And I was I was absolutely intrigued by it. And it's such a shame that it burnt down in 1979. I'm sure the fact that the owner had a planning application to build houses on the site had nothing to do with the fact that it burned down.

00:31:23:13 - 00:31:25:00
Robin
But who knows?

00:31:26:19 - 00:31:52:08
Marnie
The ill commune ended in total anarchy. People were living under the house, the electricity and gas was cut off and the residents were tearing up floorboards for heat. While I think that communes and squats like this serves an important purpose provided home and a sense of belonging for people with nowhere else to go, It's not housing custom that I'm advocating for en masse, but not all of these squats and communes ended in fire.

00:31:52:20 - 00:31:57:06
Marnie
Some of them became something quite different.

00:31:57:06 - 00:32:00:18
Robin
Maybe I've been lucky because my neighbors are really nice and stuff.

00:32:01:02 - 00:32:01:19
Weed
Well, maybe that's just.

00:32:01:19 - 00:32:03:24
Robin
The kind of people that are attracted to this kind of co-op.

00:32:05:02 - 00:32:22:23
Marnie
Some of them became something quite different. It works, it does work, and it just makes you feel much more close to everyone else. Housing co-op a way for people to live cheaply and contribute to a system of shared responsibility rather than private property.

00:32:23:24 - 00:32:44:14
Woman
They discuss things like for people who doesn't have houses, like homeless people and stuff, and we need to get some more bedrooms for kids who sleep through their mums.

00:32:45:15 - 00:33:14:21
Marnie
But kind of help to create home for people as we slide deeper into a housing crisis. That's next time. On dwelling, find us on your favorite streaming platforms. Release weekly on Mondays. Follow us on social media. A dwelling on the scoreboard powered by transmission Roundhouse.