For many, those rates may be wildly out of budget, especially for sharing your living space with more than three other people. It's a far cry from what comes to mind when you think of communal living circa the 1970s, where participants lived among tens, sometimes hundreds, of others and had very few expenses.

Members of The Farm, a financially independent and successful commune of 800, at Summertown in southwestern Tennessee, are shown in the commune's clinic in 1976. AP

Source: The Guardian