Co-Housing: How a Man Built an Apartment Complex for His Family and Friends

Nearly a decade ago, real estate developer Chad Dale made a purchase that changed the way he thought about how people live together.

Dale and a small group of his friends had decided to pool their money to purchase a vacation home on Whidbey Island, about an hour from Seattle. With five families with young children cycling in and out of the four-bedroom, one-bath farmhouse sharing meals, splitting chores, and weathering the inevitable frictions of living in close quarters, Dale realized that sharing property was a great idea in theory, but not sustainable in practice.

“There were a lot of people sharing an intimate space — it was a little too intimate,” Dale told Business Insider. “There were lots [of things] about that place that were great, and lots that weren’t great.”

The vacation home experiment’s shortcomings sparked an idea for something bigger and more permanent.

For years, Dale turned over the same question: What would communal living look like if it were designed to last?

He found his answer in co-housing, an arrangement where people have private homes but share amenities and collectively manage common spaces. Not to be confused with co-living, which is when people have private rooms in shared homes, co-housing is unlike a typical rental setup in that residents also often have an ownership stake or governance role in the housing community. It’s a housing model that is gaining traction as people seek more sustainable, community-oriented housing.

An ‘adult version’ of a co-op community

Dale is the developer behind Shared Roof, a 35-unit community that opened in 2023 in Seattle’s Phinney Ridge neighborhood.

Dale financed the project with the help of 13 other friends and family members, each of whom invested in the building. Contributions ranged from $50,000 to $5 million, and ownership stakes in the building’s LLC are proportional to each person’s investment. At Shared Roof, there are no HOA fees; residents still pay monthly rent, but it goes directly to the LLC rather than a traditional landlord.

“It’s a business model that you see sometimes in office buildings, but I’d never seen one done in a mixed-use building,” said Ray Johnston, who helped lead the project as a founding partner of Johnston Architects. “The things that Chad and his friends came to the table with were exciting.”

Designing the building took careful planning

Shared Roof is meant to feel more like a European block than a typical new build in Seattle. Dale points to places like Amsterdam, where design encourages neighborly interaction and sustainability, as sources of architectural inspiration.

The five-story building wraps around an interior courtyard, with underground parking below. No two units are alike; residences range from about 2,000 to 5,000 square feet.

“One of the more interesting challenges in the project came on the fourth and fifth floors, where many of the long-term investors live, and the units were highly customized to serve the needs of different families,” Johnston said. “It required thoughtful, more detailed spatial planning than in typical multifamily projects to make those individualized layouts fit together under one roof, but it also presented an opportunity to create spaces that reflected how the residents wanted to live.”

While residents have private homes, they share a suite of amenities, including a library, an art room, and a rooftop greenhouse. Street-level retail — such as a café, a brewery, and several restaurants — help keep the community connected to the surrounding neighborhood.

For Dale, co-housing was a way to get the community and amenities he and his friends craved without paying peak city prices or having to move away entirely.

Still, living at Shared Roof isn’t cheap. Some larger units in the building have a monthly rent of $8,000. To ensure affordability, Shared Roof participates in Seattle’s Multifamily Tax Exemption program (MFTE) and has set aside about 20% of units for moderate-income renters.

“It was incredibly important for us to have as much diversity — including income diversity — in the building as we could,” Dale said. “We’re huge supporters of infill diversity, rather than separate diversity. In my opinion, that’s not the correct approach.”

It’s a multi-generational building

Nine of Shared Roof’s investors live in the building, including Dale, who lives with his wife and their three kids in a 1,800-square-foot, three-bedroom unit.

Dale views being surrounded by a mix of younger couples and older residents as a unique plus to their living arrangement.

“There are groups of people that benefit from being together, and our model was really about a generational, family-oriented approach,” he said.

“My folks and my wife’s folks are all in Michigan, so my kids didn’t get a lot of interaction with older people. To see my neighbor with Parkinson’s interacting with my 7-year-old — they’re both winning.”

The kids also have plenty of other children their age in the building, and with so much to do there, from hanging out on the rooftop trampoline to playing on the 5,000-square-foot turf soccer field, hangouts are often — sometimes more than parents would prefer.

“They come home, crack the door, toss their school bag inside, and then leave because all their friends are around,” Dale said. He added that “while that’s really cool, and exactly what I was hoping for, it’s an unintended consequence.”

‘I love our life here’

John Ware, a technical program manager, and his partner, Liesl Langley, had been living in a large home in Phinney Ridge, but were looking to downsize as they entered the empty-nest years. After hearing about Shared Roof through word of mouth and touring the building, they were sold.

Ware and Langley are investors in the building and were among the first couples to move in. They’re in a 2,000-square-foot apartment with three bedrooms and 2.5 baths. Inside, it’s finished with hardwood floors, walnut custom cabinetry, and high-end appliances, including a Liebherr refrigerator.

Fancy finishes aside, Ware said one of the biggest draws to living at Shared Roof is the community he and Langley have become a part of.

“I used to live in a building that had about 90 units, and I probably knew a third of folks, but we know every single person who lives in this building. We have a group chat on WhatsApp, so that folks can stay in touch with what’s happening,” Ware, 54, told Business Insider.

He and his partner have become the building’s unofficial — and, in practice, official — social directors. Every year, they host an Oscars party, and in the weeks leading up to it this month, they’ve been holding a movie night every week.

Ware said it’s little things like this that make co-housing worthwhile.

“We travel here and there, but after we’ve traveled for a while, I just want to be home, because of where we live — not just Seattle, but our neighborhood and community,” he added. “I love our life here and love this place.”

For some residents, co-housing is a lifeline in a pricey city

Mary Jo Wagner, a spa owner, fell in love with Shared Roof after visiting a client who lived there.

“I had just come to visit her one day for dinner, downstairs at one of the restaurants, and I was just thinking to myself how amazing it would be to live in a community like this,” Wagner, 53, told Business Insider.

Wagner moved in with her adult son in 2024, but he has since moved out. Over the past year, she downsized from a two-bedroom to a one-bedroom unit with her dog. Her apartment is among the roughly 20% of units set aside in the building for moderate-income earners.

“The median income in the city is so incredibly high, so it drives up all the prices of the regular rental units that are available,” Wagner said. “The fact that Shared Roof participates in this MFTE program is absolutely amazing because it is more affordable.”

Wagner said the building’s amenities, along with its retail stores, including a wine shop and a bakery, also helped seal the deal. She especially loves the building’s library and the rooftop garden.

“I live in a small one-bedroom unit, but if I want to have my friends or family over for a larger gathering, there are spaces in the building to do that, which is just amazing.”

For Wagner, Shared Roof doesn’t feel like a typical apartment complex. Beyond the extra amenities, the connections she’s made there feel genuine.

“Everybody kind of looks out for one another,” she said. “It feels a little bit like being a part of a large family.”