BRATTLEBORO — As the Vermont economy continues to slowly recover from the current recession, there is still one big elephant in the living room: the housing market.
With apartment prices still high, it's difficult to find affordable living situations in the Brattleboro area.
The solution for many is to share an apartment, or find a homeowner open to sharing his living space with other tenants.
But while sharing a living space makes economic sense, the human equation may not always add up.
In her new book, Sharing Housing: a Guidebook for Finding and Keeping Good Housemates, Guilford resident Annamarie Pluhar combines her long housemate experience and background in business-management to help readers of any demographic successfully search for their best living situation.
She also has a website, www.sharinghousing.com, that offers tips on how to avoid the common pitfalls on shared housing. As she puts it, “A good housemate is a joy. A bad housemate is a disaster.”
In Sharing Housing, Pluhar lays out a series of charts and lists to help visualize the small, but crucial, steps that go into such an important decision.
One way to avoid a bad housemate, she said, is to be clear what your expectations are about sharing a living space, and whether they match those of the person or persons you'll be sharing with.
Pluhar believes that interviewing a prospective housemate can prevent a lot of headaches. An ideal interview would cover area such as use of the kitchen, bathroom, and common spaces; household cleanliness and chores; how bills get paid, and the acceptability of guests and pets.
Her book has several tools, including worksheets to evaluate the way you live and what is important to you in a housemate, along with the things you absolutely must have in a successful living arrangement.
As for what makes for a good housemate relationship, she said it boils down to what some call “the three Cs” - communication, cooperation, and consideration.
“I see a lot of parallels between my work in business management and the experience of finding a good housemate,” Plihar said. “When I was writing, I kept thinking my housing interest was separate, but after it was done, I realized that the reason I could write this is because I pay attention to process.”
Pluhar sees this book as reflective of an ongoing cultural shift as well.
“There is a growing movement towards sharing with Zipcars and bed and breakfasts and so on,” she says. “I think our consciousness is shifting around ownership. recognizing that if we do something together it works out better.”