People interested in cohousing occasionally ask about the population who live in cohousing and how this population compares to the US population as a whole. I recently finished reading Graham Meltzer's book "Sustainable Community: Learning from the cohousing model." This valuable book, published in 2007, is based on Meltzer's research, much of it originally done for his Ph.D. dissertation in Australia. In this book he looks at a dozen cohousing communities around the Pacific Ocean, two in British Columbia, Canada, six in Washington state and California, one in New Zealand, two in Tasmania, Australia, and the last in Tokyo, Japan. The focus of the book is indeed on sustainability which the author examines in considerable detail.

I think the title of this blog is an interesting question and one worthy of research. A good research design could compare a range of health and social indicators for people living in cohousing with a matched group of people from similar social and economic backgrounds who do not live in cohousing. Would there be different levels of physical and mental health rates over time? Would people in cohousing be healthier?

One question that I think is important is the level of satisfaction for people who reside in cohousing. How satisfied with their living arrangements are cohousers? I am sure there is a range, from those very satisfied, to those who are dissatisfied. On the whole, I suspect most people living in cohousing are relatively satisfied, as they chose cohousing for a variety of reasons. I would be interested in knowing on some scale developed by psychologists just how satisfied cohousers are with their communities and living in cohousing. A related area would be what areas of cohousing are most attractive and satisfying and what areas are more problemmatic. Another important research quesstion would be to compare the satisfaction level of people living in cohousing with people who do not live in cohousing. I assume one would probably want to match cohousers with people of similar social and economic background to get a better comparison.

Ruminations from the Research Room!
As with any new move-in we're still arranging the furniture, but it's personally great to have a place to put things at last. Co-host David Entin and I met face-to-face at his home at Rocky Hill Coho, along with Craig Ragland and Raines Cohen (my sweetie) where we got up to speed on each other's visions of this room and coho research in general. We got a preview of the public unveiling of the Cohousing Census 2008 by Craig. Great stuff! and a good geography lesson for everyone involved. (Hint, there's MAPS!)

I'm also looking forward to sharing my interests and findings you, including a full brain dump on frequently asked questions from the dozen plus academic researchers I've had a occasion to hear from over the years.

Welcome to the Research Blog! Coming Soon.