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Looking for housing that’s more than just a place to hang your hat? Welcome to Le Chateau McMansion, a rental home in Redwood City, where tenants don’t just share walls: They share their lives.
At this intentional community, residents cook together, host movie nights, hike on weekends and split bills like family. As longtime resident Tegan Crombie puts it, “You don’t just get a room here. You get friends built in.”
A decade of shared living
McMansion began in 2012 when a group of Stanford students started splitting household expenses and discovered they loved the camaraderie that came with it. Over time, that simple arrangement evolved into a self-sustaining “intentional community” — a cooperative-style living setup that values connection, shared resources and collaboration over privacy and profit.
For more than a decade, the house has been home to a rotating group of tenants — currently nine. Residents past and present have all kinds of interests, skills and passions. They’re musicians, gamers, robot designers, international students, bakers, bikers, linguists, and educators, to name just a few. They describe McMansion as something between a co-op, a family and a low-cost social experiment in one of the most expensive housing markets in the world.
“If someone is looking for, like, a bunk, and then they go to work, we’re probably not the house for them,” Crombie said. “But if they’re looking to have activities and friends and community, then that’s who we’re looking for.”
An affordable alternative
In a city where the median rent for a studio apartment hovers around $2,200, McMansion offers a deal: Residents pay about $1,300 a month. That covers not just rent, but utilities and communal groceries.
The main house, built in the 1950s with some expansions over the years, has four bedrooms and five bathrooms, and a personality as eclectic as its tenants. There’s a “ballroom” that doubles as a living room and party space complete with a screen for projecting movies. When the comfy furniture is pushed aside, the room can also hold dance parties. There’s a dining room, with a table that can seat 12; an office with multiple work stations and a video gaming area; a spacious kitchen; a garage with gym equipment and a maker space. There’s a large yard with a swimming pool and hot tub, two grills and a handmade pizza oven, plentiful seating, a cozy hammock nook, ripe tomato plants; and there’s a separate backyard cottage, for when residents have guests visiting or need some privacy.
And then there’s Margarida the cat. She’s the reigning queen of the household, as well as the resident who’s lived there the longest. Once feral, she now is so beloved that a wall of the dining room is dedicated as a shrine to her, full of paintings and photos of the feline.
“She’s the love of my life,” Crombie said with a laugh.
A house full of stories
Other walls are covered in photos of current and former residents, various artwork and displays of Crombie’s completed jigsaw puzzles. Over the years, each resident has made their mark on the home — literally.
“There’s basically a lot of different fingerprints that have been left over from all the different folks that have lived here,” Crombie said.
Residents find out about McMansion in different ways, some by hearing about it from friends. Others, such as tenant Precious Sunday, found it through advertising (in his case, via Craigslist). But no matter where they come from, the expectation is that they’re looking for community above and beyond just the shared common spaces of traditional housemate situations.
“When we have people who are interested in joining, one of the main questions we ask is, ‘If you could run an event at this house, what would you want to do?'” said Crombie, who is fond of running Dungeons and Dragons nights. Others may want to lead a musical jam or group cooking session.
“We’re always looking for people who want to add to what we already have here as opposed to, ‘I need a place to sleep,'” Crombie added.
Another resident, Ryan Kessler, moved into the McMansion last year, after previously living in a similar setup in Redwood City that ended when the landlord decided to sell the house.
“I wanted social living. I didn’t want to live in a little sad box downtown by myself,” he said.
A biologist – and a musician – by training, Kessler now tends to the garden and backyard.
“He’s also a big animal guy,” Crombie said. “He rescued a baby squirrel.”
“Two baby squirrels!” Kessler chimed in.
Shared spaces, daily life
Officially, the landlord rents out the house to one tenant, currently Crombie, who then sublets to the rest. At any given time, there are around 10 tenants,
Residents can designate which belongings are personally owned and which are communal. In the office, for example, several workstations are used exclusively by particular tenants who work from home, while others are labeled “GC,” meaning “for general consumption.”
Though the vibe is generally harmonious, with so many residents sharing space, conflicts do naturally arise from time to time.
“It absolutely can be a challenge to kind of make sure that everybody is comfortable with each other. We do our best to essentially facilitate that through conversation,” Crombie said. At the time of this interview, residents were preparing for a barbecue — one of the group’s frequent “family meals” – and food supplies were piled on the kitchen island. Typically, the housemates use the family meal to bring up any business and discuss issues.
“For the most part, we encourage people to, if there are conflicts, address them directly with whomever it might be, and if roommates are having a hard time getting along, then we move people around between (bed)rooms until we find something that is comfortable for them,” Crombie said. “There have absolutely been personality clashes. Some folks really like it neat, some folks don’t mind mess, and it’s just a constant sort of conversation to make sure everyone is as comfortable as possible, given all the different folks we have here.”
They don’t keep a chore list or schedule, although cleaners are sometimes hired for whole-house cleaning basics, such as mopping and vacuuming.
“Beyond that, we have a system that we call a ‘do-acracy,’ … if you see something that bothers you, you can fix it. If the trash is overflowing and you notice it, you take it out. With so many people who are all very different, doing a chore list gets out of hand and it just doesn’t get addressed, but everybody kind of has tasks that they do,” Crombie said.
Sunday, for example, usually takes out the garbage bins each week. But if he isn’t available, the others are happy to step up.
“That’s one of the nice things about living in a community,” Kessler said. “You get to have other people around, and you get to help them. You get to actually be useful in a daily sense.”
More information, including an application for prospective housemates, is available at Le Chateau McMansion.
