case study: eucalyptus

This post was written by Evy from notes taken during an interview they did in February 2025 with Eucalyptus resident Jenna Birkmeyer.

Date founded: A different version called “Fell House” started 2013, and the most recent “Eucalyptus” vibes have been since 2020 or so

Location: Panhandle, San Francisco

Rented or owned: Rented, with one master tenant and the rest as sub-tenants

Governance: Informal consensus

Amount of space: 11 bedrooms, shared office, joint living room and kitchen, backyard with wifi and extension cord power, media room with projector and cozy space, and a garage storage space

depictions of Eucalyptus house

A Brief History

Though the building became communal housing ~12 years ago, it’s gone through several distinct generations. The first iteration was called “Fell House” and several young tech founder men lived there starting in 2013. In 2017 most of the house turned over, there was a name change to “Bath House,” and there was a big vibe shift. In 2019 it was renamed to Eucalyptus. When COVID hit in 2020, there was significant turnover, and several artsy folks moved in. Pandemic-times involved several creative projects, such as immersive theater productions. When vaccines came out, several residents shifted how they spent their time and ended up moving out. The house almost ended and another shift took place. The new residents trended a bit less whimsical and a bit more “golden retriever energy,” enjoying sporty activities and simple cozy vibes. The house has kept approximately that vibe since 2021, and has kept the name “Eucalyptus” (named after the trees on the panhandle park that it faces), often shortened to “Euca”.

“The colors are greens and yellows. Golden retriever people. Warm and friendly. Down-to-earth.”

-- Cyd (a new resident) when asked about the vibe of Euca

Decisions

Euca usually has house meetings every other week, and they’ve recently been trying an every-three-week cadence. Since they’ve been around for so long, they have a lot of systems that work well for them and decisions don’t need to be made as frequently. They have no formal system around voting, but I would describe it as consensus vibes. They discuss a topic, see what the general opinion seems to be, see if they can find a solution everyone can be on board with, and usually only formally vote once everyone seems fine to move forward with the proposal. Over a conversation people’s opinions usually roughly converge with minimal emotions about it, or those in disagreement decide to just go along with the majority. Where this isn’t the case, and somebody does have a stronger opinion that continues to be in disagreement with the majority, often the group is able to find a compromise or can agree to an interim solution to try, and then revisit at a later house meeting.

Chores

Every Sunday after 8pm, anyone can come to the kitchen and reset the chore board. Then each resident assigns themself a chore for the week, first come first served. This system has been around for at least four years, and the list of chores has been pretty stable with only occasional tweaks or additions (for example, they added “baking bread” recently because someone was baking bread twice a week which was a notable amount of labor).

trash+recycling, compost, dishwasher unload AM, dishwasher unload PM, nightly sweeping and counter wipe-down, dish rack empty, grocery shoppers x2, fridge cleanout and unload groceries, baking bread

Q: What happens if people are out of town?
A: There’s a section to note when people aren’t around, and some weeks easier chores are combined to make sure everything is covered.

Q: What if someone hasn’t done their chore or isn’t around to do it?
A: Several of the tasks aren’t urgent beyond doing them at most once a day. If someone hasn’t done their chore for a while, it’s normal to message them a reminder. It’s also common for people to help each other out in these moments, but it’s never an expectation.

Q: Do some chores always get done by the same person?
A: Some people tend to prefer certain chores, but there’s generally a culture of switching up who’s assigned to what. Grocery shopping is done by every single resident, signed up for in pairs more than a week in advance on a separate sheet. Shopping in pairs is great housemate bonding time.

Q: What about chores that fall outside of this list?
A: Euca is required by their lease to have a housekeeper come every two weeks (the cost is split by residents, labelled as “utilities”). They also have a deep clean work requirement, where every three months everyone does at least 3h of work to reorganize, scrub, repair, garden, or any other task that falls out of their day-to-day chore list. These are tracked in a spreadsheet, which includes a list of possible tasks that people could do.

Food

It’s strongly encouraged, but not required, to buy into the house food plan. Eating together is a big part of Euca culture and connection, and everyone is currently part of the food plan.

Every week, two people shop for groceries in-person together. They can choose where they shop, which is often Trader Joe’s and sometimes Costco. They buy staples, which aren’t formal but are intuited over time, as well as anything on the slack thread grocery list.

The food budget is $60/person/week, which includes this grocery run and also any mid-week supplementary purchases (which anyone can do). Everyone pays equally into food through Splitwise. People can opt out for weeks that they’re not there, but can’t half opt out for half-weeks (though if someone is gone for two half weeks in a row, they can opt out of one of those grocery runs).

Sometimes people will buy groceries and cook a fancy dinner for people who are around, and those are often only charged to the people who were around and ate that dinner.

Using Common Space

Garage: This space is used for bike storage, laundry, a chest freezer, and personal storage space. Each resident gets about enough space for one big tub or suitcase.

Office: The shared office space is first-come first-served. People generally take their belongings with them when they leave, but people can also move someone else’s stuff aside if a seat is empty.

Guests: Guests are welcome to stay overnight at Euca. Most folks are happy to offer their bed to a guest if they’re away that night, as long as the sheets are washed. The media room on the top floor can also be used as a guest room, which works well since it has a futon and minimal through-traffic.

music corner, office space

Finances

Splitwise: Splitwise is used to pay for food, non-food essentials like soap and paper towels, utilities, and purchases less than $30 to improve the house. Residents who are away for a week don’t split food, but do still pay for utilities.

House fund: There’s also a house fund which is used for purchases greater than $30, furniture, parties, and repairs. This doesn’t have a consistent source of incoming money, but has been filled over time through guest fees, sublet fees, couples fees, and interest on their savings account.

Guest fee: Every resident has 4 free guest days per month, and after that guests pay $8/day for food (unless they’re not around to eat). After 7 days, they also pay an additional $15/day for utilities and taking up space (called the “cumbersome fee”).

Sublet fee: When people sublet their room, they pay $5/day to the house for the potential inconvenience of having someone around who is less well-known to the house and also generally needs some amount of onboarding.

Couples fee: When a couple shares a room, they pay $300/month of extra rent. $170 subsidizes a small room that has lowered rent -- notably meaning that when a couple doesn’t live at Euca, which is currently true, the total rent collected is less than they give the landlord, so they have to pull some money from their house fund for rent. The remaining $130 (when the couples fee is being paid) goes to the house fund.

Spending house money: Purchases made using the house fund are discussed and voted on at house meetings. If approved, typically the person who proposed the purchase will buy the item on their own, and then will get refunded from the Euca bank account. For smaller purchases on splitwise, it’s also recommended to ask for input for anything non-essential because people can remove themselves from contributing to non-essential purchases they don’t want to pay for.

Move out fund: In 2024, everyone started paying $10/month into a move-out fund. This is meant to cover the security deposit for the house on move-out, since it will likely not be fully returned due to common space wear-and-tear contributed to by everyone who has lived at Euca over the years. They’re keeping track of who’s lived at the house over time, so that they can return leftover move-out funds if there are any in the end.

Recruiting

“Recruiting is exhausting and it’s hard to not have it be a lot of work,” Jenna said and I couldn’t agree more. But there are ways to help recruiting feel more efficient and here’s how Euca does it:

Step 1: Written form. Interested applicants can view a Notion page with information about the posting and fill out a Google form.

Step 2: Review of responses. As the form gets new submissions, automated messages are sent to a Slack channel where people review them. Though anyone can chime in with thoughts on who to advance to the next stage, one person takes lead on choosing who gets phone screens and this person also assigns who will do the phone screen.

Step 3: Phone screen. This is a 15 minute vibe check and logistics check to cut out anyone who would obviously not be a good fit.

Step 4: In-person interviews. These are held for 6-9 candidates in one night, over 2-3 hours. Three candidates come each hour, each individually rotating every 20 minutes between three different rooms of the house. Residents are split into three groups, each meeting each candidate for 20 minutes, and each asking a set of questions about a different topic: contribution, communication, and lifestyle.

Step 5: Vote. First, residents individually rate each candidate from 0 (veto) to 4 (very excited). They then focus on the people the house is most excited about and vote on which of them they will give an offer to.

Step 6: Reference check. This is almost always with a past housemate, but there is flexibility for circumstances that don’t allow that. These have been very helpful! When they’ve ignored “mid” or bad reference calls in the past they’ve usually ended up regretting it.

Eucalyptus doesn’t have a trial system, so once someone is asked to move in they become an indefinite member of the house.

Social Vibes

The day-to-day socializing at Euca tends to happen in their kitchen/living-room space, the central social hub of the house. People often cook and eat together here, as they talk casually about their life. There is also a norm of people being able to spend time in common space in quiet introverted ways.

“You don’t have to be ‘on’ to be in your living room.”

-- Jenna

Euca residents also regularly come together to exercise and do other activities. They go for runs on the Panhandle and Golden Gate Park, work out in their backyard or living room, and go for bike rides. Several of them attend bachata classes together. They sometimes watch movies or TV shows in their media room. And they enjoy a nice group couch cuddle.

They also host several events, including a backyard concert series and a yearly halloween rager. The halloween party is the only party that the whole house co-hosts and pays for from the house fund, but there are also several other parties that take place at Euca over the year co-hosted by individuals from the house.

padded carpet in the living room

Lessons learned

thanks for reading <3 this was a post from thought clippings on community housing