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Sustainability

Environmental concerns rate highly among those drawn to cohousing. This category explores some of the ways in which to make a cohousing lifestyle as sustainable as possible.

  • “Solar Panel” Says it All
    by Lorenzo Bassman, LaQuerencia/Fresno Cohousing

    News Flash: Worst Downturn in Housing Market in Decades! Mortgage Crisis Forces Glut of Foreclosures! Too Many Homes For Sale – Nothing Selling! Fresno Cohousing Prices Locked in at Above-Market Rates! Fresno Cohousing Membership Votes to Increase Prices by $10K!

    What’s wrong with this picture? Or, perhaps more significantly, what’s right with it?

  • Eco-community: Cohousing that preserves green space
    by Michael Blate, The Woodlands at DeerHaven Hills

    Cohousing can serve a variety of purposes and take different forms. But one exciting approach is a hybrid of cohousing and the ecovillage – what I call an eco-community. Here your monthly mortgage payment does double-duty. Not only do you create a new cohousing community, you also help the environment immediately around you. You might get a spectacular park or forest for your backyard, to boot. It can be a win-win situation for everyone.

  • Cohousing and the climate crisis: Making a difference, leading the way
    by Raines Cohen, Berkeley Cohousing

    In every cohousing neighborhood I've lived in or visited, sustainability has been an explicit core value, particularly expressed in how the community was designed and built. Many of us have the luxury to choose to live lightly on the earth, "changing the world, one neighborhood at a time," as a Coho/US bumper sticker puts it.

  • Cohousing and Renewable Energy: Leading the Way toward Zero-energy Homes
    by John Parsons

    This year’s National Cohousing Conference was a treasure trove of useful information for established cohousing communities and forming groups. One of the more visionary, yet practical, sessions was a presentation on renewal energy led by Mark Daugherty, energy systems consultant and chief technology officer for Great Lakes BioFuels in Madison, WI, and Bryan Bowen, a Colorado-based architect, specializing in low-impact, environment-friendly housing design. Attendees learned about some sobering trends on peak oil and global warming, along with positive steps that cohousing communities are uniquely qualified to take.

  • Stepping stones to sustainability
    by Liz Walker, photos by Jim Bosjolie

    This is a historic moment on Planet Earth. Life as we know it is about to change dramatically as global climate change accelerates, and as we reach “Peak Oil,” when demand outstrips supply for fossil fuels that are increasingly hard to extract. As we look toward a future in which our traditional energy sources are severely depleted, cohousing neighborhoods have an increasingly important role to play in modeling a greener lifestyle.

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