Life Without Us

“Food creates a distraction . . . When you’re just talking to somebody one-on-one it’s hard sometimes to get out your ideas and open up your heart; but, when you’re distracted by the flavours and you’re excited and it’s drawing in memories, suddenly it’s just a lot easier to have the conversation flowing.” — Natalie Bay

Like many others, Natalie Bay hit video call fatigue early on in the pandemic. Despite living alone and missing seeing people, she found the online version of pre-pandemic hangouts left her feeling less connected than ever. Then one day she texted some friends in a group chat about her ‘boring’ plans to make macaroni and cheese with the leftovers in her fridge and suddenly found herself hosting her first online cooking class.

Join host Valery as she drops into a ‘Cooking with Nat’ class and hears from community members one year after they first started gathering on Monday nights to (virtually) cook and eat together. 

 In this episode:

* The high failure rate of pandemic online hangouts 

* How a macaroni and cheese craving launched an online cooking class

* Highlights from over a year of collaborative cooking and eating 

* Why food, and particularly preparing food together, is such a magic ingredient to creating connection and community 

* Whether to turn your community building event into a side hustle

* Why communities thrive on consistency.

Find Natalie: Instagram

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“The box is generally a two or three story single family home and that’s about it. I think knowing that we need to get a lot more creative about how we’re living means that we need to raise that bar and enable more of that creativity. Because cities should be a little messy. ” — Craig Ruttan

Craig Ruttan bought his first home this year giving him a front row seat to the urban housing issues he was already familiar with as a public policy leader and community enthusiast.

At the outset of their search, he, his fiancé Alex, two other couples, and an individual set out to buy a four-unit home in downtown Toronto for their new cohousing community. At the end of it, Craig, Alex, and their friends, Mike and Heather, moved into a two-unit home with ambitions to expand through laneway house construction in the future.  

Host Valery connected with Craig three weeks post move-in to talk about the joy of starting to realize his and his co-owners’ vision for living in community and the choices that need to be made to replace profit with people as the focus of Toronto’s housing policy. 

In this episode:

* House hunting as a group

* Evolving private rituals and traditions into shared community experiences 

* Queer concepts of community 

* Intergenerational wealth, white privilege, and Toronto’s homogenization by housing policy problem

* Housing access through “densification” “as-of-right zoning bylaws,” “strata ownership,” “shared equity models” and other creative policy solutions

* Future hopes for a community and a city

Find Craig: Twitter

Find Other Episode References:

Black North Initiative and Habitat for Humanity GTA Toronto Star editorial on Anti-Black Racism and Housing 

Toronto’s Laneway Suites Program

Toronto’s As-of-right Garden Suites Proposal

Types of Strata Ownership

Options for Homes

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“Taking control a little earlier and figuring out who you want to live with, what the rules are going to be, and how you’re going to deal with things I think is just sensible planning. And maybe with the pandemic people will be thinking a bit more in terms of, ‘oh look what can happen down the road.’” — Louise Bardswich

Louise Bardswich is one of the four headline making (and legislation inspiring) Golden Girls of Port Perry and a sought after expert on how to re-imagine what aging in place can look like. 

Louise and host Valery Navarrete connected in February to talk about how her community has fared in the last year of the pandemic, and how choosing to live together before any of them “needed to” set them up for greater independence over the long-term than any were likely to have experienced otherwise.

In this episode:

* The math you need to know if you plan to live a long and independent life 

* How to design a shared home for accessibility and life stage changes

* The need for control: why living in community with a smaller group of people and rules you choose might suit you better than the alternatives in your senior years

* The renewed interest in the Golden Girls of Port Perry’s model and urgent need for more options following the crisis seniors in Canada have faced during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Find Louise and the Golden Girls of Port Perry coverage in

goldengirlsportperry.ca

The Ottawa Citizen

The Agenda on TVO 

Find other episode references

They Left Us Everything by Plum Johnson

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“You gotta be honest about your hard lines; but, also be as generous as possible, because when you live in a collective the goal can’t be getting your way and convincing everyone else you need to get your way. The goal ought to be finding something for the collective that is as good and as safe for everyone as possible.” — Karim Rizkallah


Karim Rizkallah has a 21 year relationship with living in community and shares his most recent milestone in that journey with Life Without Us host, Valery Navarrete. Together with four others they founded the Clarens Commons cohouse in Toronto. 

On today’s episode, Karim joins Valery as a podcast key contributor to answer listeners’ questions about living in and nourishing community. We hope this will become a regular feature on the show. We just need more questions from y’all. So, please send us more questions. Cool? 

In this episode:

* Has the word “community” been hijacked?

* Is it useful to distinguish between so-called “big community” and the more organic, member-driven communities that many of us try to foster in our day-to-day lives?

* What do we mean by “living in community?”

* How do you determine fit for your community?

* What makes a space ideal for cohousing or other big community project?

To learn more about Karim and Clarens Commons check out these pieces from The Toronto Star, CBC Tapestry, and VICE.

Join Valery’s email list and get bonus content at lifewithoutuspod.com and hang out with her on Instagram @lifewithoutuspod

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“We don’t have a lot of training in our culture for how to share your space with people that are [not] your family or your significant other.” — Gillian Morris

Gillian Morris is the founder of Hitlist, a travel app that helps you find cheap flights, and co-editor of the Supernuclear Guide to Coliving. Gillian has been founding and living in coliving communities since 2015 and believes she is a better person because of it. 

Host Valery Navarrete talks to Gillian about how to make living with other adults who are not  your family work, and Gillian’s belief that while coliving may not be for everyone, it is something that would make sense for many more people than are practicing it right now.

In this episode:

* How our childhood experiences can create space sharing mindsets.

* The fears that prevent people who are coliving or cohousing curious from making the leap.

* The guardrails that help make member-founded coliving communities work better for everyone (vs. commercial coliving residences, where someone operates the community for profit).  

 * Stories of laughter and love from Gillian’s 20+ member coliving community in Puerto Rico . 

* Why now is the best time start your own community (yes, right now!)

* Why we need to re-examine societal expectations around independence that are bad for the planet and bad for people, too. 

Find Gillian and Supernuclear: Find Gillian on Twitter and Instagram. Visit the Supernuclear Guide to Coliving. 

Find other episode references: Why Not Now? Now is the time to start a community 

Join Valery’s email list and get bonus content at lifewithoutuspod.com and hang out with her on Instagram @lifewithoutuspod

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“What has affirmed my desire to be part of community is the feeling of pleasure that comes from a sense of being one, in service to something that is beyond yourself.” — Adil Dhalla

Adil Dhalla is a community organizer and the Director of Community for Reset, a social enterprise that has been making pop up playgrounds since 2015. Adil’s past titles include Managing Director at Artscape Launchpad and Executive Director at the Centre for Social Innovation.

Host Valery Navarrete talks to Adil about his experience moving into the Clarens Commons cohouse in Toronto during the COVID-19 pandemic . . . just as she was moving out of it.  

In this episode:

• The benefits of living in community during a time of loneliness and isolation brought on by pandemic public health measures.
• The value of intentionally creating space to ask the question “how can we live better together” through monthly house meetings.
• With reflections inspired by authors Layla F. Saad, adrienne maree brown, Priya Parker, Arundhati Roy, and civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., Adil shares the complexities of the cohouse’s journey to be in solidarity with the racial justice movement, and talks about the future of community given the crossroads at which we currently sit.       
• Adil and Valery talk about the role Reset played in their shared community building, and Adil shares his vision for “just play” in the city as Reset gets set to launch a social recovery project and community hub pilot in Toronto this summer.   

Find Adil and Reset: thisisreset.org, adildhalla.com, Instagram, TikTok, and Clubhouse

Find other episode references: Me and White Supremacy by Layla F Saad, Pleasure Activism by adrienne maree brown, The Art of Gathering by Priya Parker, and The Pandemic is a Portal by Arundhati Roy

Join Valery’s email list and get bonus content at lifewithoutuspod.com and hang out with her on Instagram @lifewithoutuspod

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In each 30 (ish) minute episode,  Strategist, Facilitator, and Community builder (and cohouse co-founder!) Valery Navarrete shares of community and connection to inspire more of us to have more “us” in our lives.

Season 1 (2021) introduced the show, profiled a number of cohousing and coliving communities, and recognized that while not everyone is ready to live in community, there are people living into the value of deepening the number and depth of their connections everywhere. 

Season 2 (2022) explored the theme of 'Time' and is dedicated to Valery's mom, Sandy, one of her greatest community-building influences. Across eight episodes it explores how to nourish connection over time and probes what changes we need to start making now in order to build the more interdependent future we need. 

Join Valery’s email list and get bonus content at lifewithoutuspod.com and hang out with her on Instagram @lifewithoutuspod

Thank you for listening, rating, reviewing, and sharing!