My personal anecdote is that living with roommates while doing a PhD has been the worst living experience. That is, I'm rather jealous how the author ended up with a functioning setup and I wonder what attributes to this. Sometimes I wonder if the main cause for my challenges is that living with other PhD students is a competitive environment of time (constant prisoner dilemma situations where nobody cooperates to maximize their time to work), or if it's the mix of cultural backgrounds (I don't know how to get them to cooperate).