If you are a millennial or younger, you probably have had a roommate or four.
You need something like a phD in psychology to understand roommate dynamics, especially roommate dynamics that involve more than three people. These are full adults, each fully formed with their own weird habits, sharing a home without the expectation that you're going to plan your futures together. Your roommates bring up all your family stuff but they're also not your family.
So, how do you read roommate in the natal chart? What if your body is reading them like a family member even though you know that the lease is just for a year? What if you're not sure if you're in community with your roommate or what that even means?
Because so many of us have roommates, because so many of us live lives that are shaped by our roommates, I think we need to take a look at which astrological house might rule roommates and how to read for roommate dynamics in the natal chart.
The case for and against the sixth house
Usually, people will say that roommates belong in the sixth house because the sixth house is the house of tenants and coworkers. I can kind of see it because house meetings can feel like work meetings and you do domestic chores with your roommates.
Are you your roommate's tenant or are they yours? You're either under the same lease or subleasing from your roommates. If you're a subletter, then your roommate might also be kind of your landlord (even if they don't act like it). Because this is a contractual relationship, because you share material interests with your roommates the same way you share material interests with your coworkers, I think that roommates can belong to the sixth house.
However—there's one issue. You leave your job at the end of the day. You don't leave your home.
The home, different from the workplace, is about rest and belonging. You have needs at home that are different from work. At home, you need to be able to chill out, sleep, and totally relax your body.
The reason why Mars has its planetary joy in the sixth house is because conflict can help you define your capacity and limits at work. Mars is comfortable in the sixth house because work is active and requires conflict. When you disagree with people at work, you learn. When you make mistakes, you learn.
When you have roommates, you feel like you're in a perpetual psychology school because you're constantly around other personalities and feeling friction even when you are at home. Your mind is always "on." Having roommates is very different from sharing home with a partner because you're not necessarily building or required to build a future together. That creates differences and friction. Your roommates wants your home to be a social hub and you don't, your roommate is not cool with dishes being left out and you are, etc. We don't always tolerate conflicts with roommates because we aren't building a specific project or working towards a goal together.
We all learn from conflict but we also need a private place to relax if we are going to process conflict. That's supposed to be our home.
The sixth house is commonly associated with roommates because classical texts place tenants in the sixth house. Is your roommate your tenant? Most of the time no. But, actually, they can be if you are subletting to them. However, the way you take up space and live together is usually not dictated by the hierarchy of the lease. Subletters still make decisions about their home and are equal to their subleasers as people within the home even if the landlord dictates hierarchy through the lease.
In my opinion, the sixth house can represent roommates but not entirely. The sixth house represents leases, house meetings, and the chore chart. It accounts for unequal contracts but not the full roommate dynamic.
The case for and against the fourth house
The fourth house is the house of the home. Wouldn't roommate fall under there?
As someone who has had a lot of roommates, I actually feel strongly about not reading for roommates using the fourth house most of the time. The fourth house is more than your home. The fourth house is your relationship to land, graves, and your homeland or your heritage. It also represents your father. I don't think that the fourth house's definition of home feels particularly roommate-y.
For the most part, roommate don't adopt each other. If I live with someone with a particular cultural heritage, I'm not becoming a person of that heritage. Sure, roommates share food and culture. But, if I live with a Japanese roommate, I don't suddenly become culturally Japanese or share the same relationship to history.
That said, I think that there are certain times when looking at the fourth house is useful when reading for roommate dynamics in the chart.
When you live with a roommate, you're literally sharing the same space and living on the same land. You still have your distinct fourth houses, and your distinct relationships to land and history, but you literally live on the same land. You share the culture of your city and your neighborhood. That's also a part of your history. You share the same housing needs.
Even still, I would be careful here. Roommate often live in the same place for varying reasons. Some people grew up in the neighborhood. Some people moved there for school or work. That's a different relationship to the fourth house and I think it usually makes sense to keep each person's relationship to the fourth house distinct in a roommate scenario.
In my opinion, the fourth house rarely represents roommates because your roommates don't usually adopt you into their family or lineage. However, the fourth house can describe a shared sense of land and home. You can share your fourth house with a roommate.
The case for the third house
The house that I really think describes roommates in the chart, as in your actual social dynamics with your roommates and not issues of leases or infrastructure, is the third house.
The third house is commonly called the house of the siblings or the neighbors. Of the social houses (and roommates dynamics are social), it is the only house that is located under the horizon. The hemisphere of the chart that is under the horizon describes the night. The third house is the house of intimacy and closeness, of daily routines made around others. It literally describes people who you see at night: siblings and neighbors.
Guess what? Your roommates are people who you see at night.
Because the third house describes people who you see at night, it also describes people who share your habits.
You find yourself adjusting to when your roommates rise and sleep. You can hear them and know intimate details about their lives. You might compare yourself to them because they're a part of your social context. You meet your roommates's friends and you get to know their attachment styles pretty well. You eat together, if not at the same time than from the same fridge. And you take care of their objects because they do the same for you.
You also figure out what is yours or theirs to carry. That's sibling shit. The third house puts the second house, the house of what is yours, in place.
And you might speculate about making a village together. You understand that you're not adopted families and don't become one another's cultures but you create a kind of understanding of kinship together. You dictate the values and the principles of your household together as roommates.
You share context. That's the roommate dynamic. You live in the same neighborhood, talk to many of the same people, and you know things about each other.
Reading your natal chart for roommates
When reading a chart for issues around roommates, I'd say to usually use the third house. However, I have seen multiple instances where transits to the sixth house show up for people through their relationships with roommates, particularly around issues with the lease. The fourth house can affect roommates too but more indirectly: you move so your roommate is affected or you go through something with your family and the energy of your home changes as a result.
The sixth house can work for roommates but, for deeper social dynamics, I would say to read the third. The eighth house can be used if you co-own furniture or cosigned a lease together and friends that you share with your roommates would go in the eleventh.
