‘When in Roam': Service Lets Jet-Setters Try Out Co-Living Around the World, Including San Francisco

It's Wednesday night, and a small crowd has begun to gather in the large communal kitchen at 1000 Fulton Street.

It's a house more than a century old, once owned by the Catholic church and home to an archbishop, who lived there alone. Later, it became a bed and breakfast. And now, it's something totally different called Roam.[[495108581, C]]

Roam's founder, Bruno Haid, jokes that the idea for his startup came out of childhood trauma. But he's not entirely joking. Though he grew up on a farm with parents who were innkeepers, Haid was — and is — an introvert. When he finally left home, he rented an apartment in an office building so he wouldn't even have to be around neighbors at night.

Haid soon began to travel for business, and found it was a lonely affair.[[495108661, C]]

"It's either you stay in your hotel, and then you're very, very isolated, or you might go to places like a bar or a club where it's more overwhelming," he said.

Roam is Haid's solution to his own dilemma — and, he figures, the dilemma faced by many "location-free" digital workers who travel the world for business or pleasure.[[495109031, C]]

Currently in five cities, with a sixth soon to open in New York, Roam houses provide the privacy introverts crave: large private bedrooms with attached private baths. The only qualifications to live there are that you're willing to pay the rent, just like a hotel. But unlike hotels, Roam is really about the common areas: dining rooms, living rooms, coworking spaces evocative of Silicon Valley startup life, and a large commercial kitchen that's open for all to use.

In San Francisco, Wednesdays are the weekly community dinner — where everyone can pitch in to help cook, or just stop by for a bite. These sorts of drop-in social activities are a key part of Roam's recipe: instead of forced sharing or social interaction, Roam simply creates the opportunity for those things to happen by chance — and often, they do. Sometimes, group activities come from the residents, guests or — Haid simply calls them "customers" — themselves.[[495108861, C]]

Unlike other forms of co-living, Roam does not promise its customers cheaper rent. Rates for each location are set based on the local apartment market — meaning San Francisco is far more expensive than the other cities where Roam currently operates.

Explore this map to see Roam's approximate rental rates for a 30-day stay beginning in late October, 2018 (according to its website):

Like a hotel, Roam customers can rent by the night, week or month — though Roam requests that your very first stay be at least seven nights. Rates get cheaper when you stay for more than 30 days, though if you deposit cash in a Roam "flex account" and draw on that to pay for your stay, you'll get the monthly rate even if you're only staying a couple of nights.

Haid says Roam's current average customer is 41 years old and skews slightly female. At most locations, there's a mix of long-term tenants and travelers just passing through, but in San Francisco, Haid said the higher prices make for mostly short stays since the house opened in May, 2018.[[495109151, C]]

"Roamers," as they're sometimes called, can sign up for a flex plan that lets them "roam" from one location to another, without having to pay rent in more that one city at a time. Haid said that means someone could live in a more affordable city — say, Miami — and only pay San Francisco rental rates for the two weeks every quarter that business required a trip to the Bay.

Watch the video above to meet some of the Roamers who showed up to make spring rolls and have dinner in the archbishop's dining room.