A bunch of people have alluded to Decision Tree being “non-representative” in ways I worried people might interpret as “unusually bad” rather than “different by design in ways that predictably made things harder”. I also think there are some lessons from the Decision Tree experiment that aren’t currently obvious and could save people a lot of heartache. So I got permission from the organizers to share more of the story.
There was a group house in the bay that had a history of taking in strays (more than one in fact, but we’re only talking about one). They would get to know people, usually online, with job loss, needing to escape abuse, or just wanting to move to CA and needing some help to get some feet under them and give them a few months couch time and food. It worked in part because the hosts were really good at boundaries and so really could limit themselves to just providing couch, food, and an amount of emotional support they were truly comfortable with. I don’t know the whole roster, but I know at least four people this house took in who were much better off for it, and no one who was made worse off.
But they only had one couch, and it took months to get people on their feet, and so many people needed help. So with the help of a benefactor they decided to create an entire house dedicated to giving people this launching pad. That was Decision Tree. The plan was to subsidize rent and provide various RA/RD types to help people get on track.
Unfortunately this meant that you went from a house full of fully functional people + one rescue person, to a house full of rescues (with the people who became functional fastest leaving soonest). There are a million reasons someone might need a place to crash for a few months. An unfortunate number of them are also reasons someone might be a difficult roommate. People who have only ever lived in dysfunctional situations, or are coming off a major trauma, are on average either harder to live or find living with other people harder. The subsidized rent meant that some portion of people genuinely couldn’t afford to move, which could force housemates to stay together where richer people would have moved apart.
So that’s why I think Decision Tree is not a great data point for group houses as a whole.
A bunch of people have alluded to Decision Tree being “non-representative” in ways I worried people might interpret as “unusually bad” rather than “different by design in ways that predictably made things harder”. I also think there are some lessons from the Decision Tree experiment that aren’t currently obvious and could save people a lot of heartache. So I got permission from the organizers to share more of the story.
There was a group house in the bay that had a history of taking in strays (more than one in fact, but we’re only talking about one). They would get to know people, usually online, with job loss, needing to escape abuse, or just wanting to move to CA and needing some help to get some feet under them and give them a few months couch time and food. It worked in part because the hosts were really good at boundaries and so really could limit themselves to just providing couch, food, and an amount of emotional support they were truly comfortable with. I don’t know the whole roster, but I know at least four people this house took in who were much better off for it, and no one who was made worse off.
But they only had one couch, and it took months to get people on their feet, and so many people needed help. So with the help of a benefactor they decided to create an entire house dedicated to giving people this launching pad. That was Decision Tree. The plan was to subsidize rent and provide various RA/RD types to help people get on track.
Unfortunately this meant that you went from a house full of fully functional people + one rescue person, to a house full of rescues (with the people who became functional fastest leaving soonest). There are a million reasons someone might need a place to crash for a few months. An unfortunate number of them are also reasons someone might be a difficult roommate. People who have only ever lived in dysfunctional situations, or are coming off a major trauma, are on average either harder to live or find living with other people harder. The subsidized rent meant that some portion of people genuinely couldn’t afford to move, which could force housemates to stay together where richer people would have moved apart.
So that’s why I think Decision Tree is not a great data point for group houses as a whole.