Professionals

Cohousing Professionals include Architects, Developers, Consultants, Marketers, Trainers, and others who are addressing the specific and special needs of cohousing communities and forming groups. To appear in this directory, a professional must have demonstrated cohousing experience and pay an annual fee of $250 to help support the costs of this website.

Based in Boulder, CO, Abraham Paiss & Associates specializes in helping cohousing groups in the early stages of development through move-in. One division, The Elder Cohousing Network, offers Elder Cohousing Getting Started workshops in Boulder, CO, and can bring these trainings to your local area. Principals Neshama Abraham and Zev Paiss, husband and wife, are both seasoned writers, workshop presenters and spokespersons for the cohousing industry, and have lived in cohousing since 1997. Their consulting services include helping groups in community building, public relations and media coverage, grassroots marketing and membership programs, advertising, and group process trainings for both multi-generational projects and elder cohousing. They have worked with cohousing communities across the U.S. to help connect groups to local developers and build their professional development teams.

303-413-8066

Raines Cohen and Betsy Morris, sharing over a quarter century supporting communities and a decade in the cohousing movement, can help you realize your community dreams. We are Cohousing Coaches, providing tools, training, and coaching for multi-generational and senior cohousing, for creating new communities and helping current ones thrive.

Betsy has a masters and doctorate in City and Regional Planning. She consults on community and economic development with nonprofits, social ventures and public agencies, and is Research Director for Coho/US. Raines is Northern California Cohousing Regional Organizer and has served on the Coho/US board and currently is on the Fellowship for Intentional Community (FIC) board, has visited most U.S. cohousing neighborhoods, and is a Certified Green Building Professional; he specializes in grassroots/guerilla marketing strategies and using Web effectively.

Chris ScottHanson, author of The Cohousing Handbook, together with his wife Kelly, provides consulting and “streamlined development” partnership participation for communities across the U.S. Chris now specializes in the startup phase of development, including land acquisition, feasibility, budgeting, scheduling and assembling the professional team. Numerous resources are available free on their website, including a Membership and Outreach Manual.

Cohousing Resources website (www.cohousingresources.com)
Cohousing Resources - on Cohousing.org

Consensus is a powerful process for collaborative decision making and building group cohesion. However, it is not something that comes naturally to those of us who’ve grown up in an individualistic, competitive culture! Many cohousing communities find that investing in training and occasional outside facilitation can greatly improve the quality of their meetings and increase the depth of their interpersonal connections.

Eris Weaver’s career as a professional facilitator and group process consultant has grown directly out of her years of experience living and working in cohousing. She works with communities to:
* Facilitate meetings on difficult or emotional issues
* Coach process teams on agenda planning and facilitation techniques
* Teach workshops on consensus and other collaborative decision-making techniques; communication skills; and conflict resolution.

707-338-8589
Eris Weaver - Website (www.erisweaver.info)

Kraus-Fitch Architects is nationally recognized as one of the most experienced architectural firms working with cohousing. In addition to full architectural services, Kraus-Fitch offers meeting facilitation and cohousing workshops focusing on programming and schematic site, common house and unit design. The office of Kraus-Fitch Architects is located at Pioneer Valley Cohousing, where both Mary Kraus and Laura Fitch have lived since 1994. Laura studied cohousing in Denmark in 1980, and both have visited and worked on cohousing throughout North America.

413-549-5799
Kraus-Fitch Architects website (www.krausfitch.com)
Kraus-Fitch Architects - on Cohousing.org

Schemata Workshop is an architectural collaborative dedicated to creating and fostering community. With a passion for cohousing, Grace Kim received a research fellowship from the University of Washington to study cohousing in Denmark. In 2004 co-founders Grace Kim and Mike Mariano lived in Copenhagen and immersed themselves in the culture of over 30 cohousing communities. Grace and Mike have visited over 20 cohousing communities across North America, and have lead the design team on projects of varying unit densities, and all with an integrated approach to sustainable ecological design. Grace's research in Denmark reinforced her belief that the most significant architectural difference between cohousing from other forms of multifamily housing is the social coherence afforded by the Common House and the common spaces that link to private dwellings.

Wonderland Hill Development Company builds villages and small neighborhoods based on the cohousing concepts that embody community, organic design and sustainable building practices and principles. With more than 30 years of development experience, Wonderland Hill Development Company is a pioneer in the high-quality Green Building arena, winning awards for almost all of their communities based on the sustainable features and Green Built strategies they design into all of them. Wonderland Hill is the largest developer of cohousing in the United States with 16 completed communities and 4 more in various stages of development. Wonderland's significant contribution to cohousing is well known, as the company has established a new model for streamlined development of cohousing in conjunction with the other leading cohousing professionals in the United States.

303-449-3232
Wonderland Hill Development Company website

Cohousing Advocates: Joelyn Malone and Phil Stevenson

Cohousing Advocates' mission is to increase access to cohousing. We partner with developers to identify available sites for cohousing, and with cohousing groups to help them clarify their vision and find the site that's right for them. We've shaved years off the cohousing development process for clients by matching people with projects already in the works, where modifications to the original design can create great cohousing.

612-871-8196
Phil [at] cohousingadvocates [dot] com
Cohousing Advocates - website (www.cohousingadvocates.com)

A full-service architecture and development consulting firm, McCamant & Durrett Architects (M&D) was formed by cohousing pioneers Katie McCamant and Charles Durrett, the folks who wrote the book Cohousing, and started the movement in America. For more than 20 years, M&D has worked with groups and professionals to create cohousing projects worldwide, more than 50 to date. M&D helps cohousing communities save time and money because of the company’s vast experience with cohousing groups, its in-depth information about cohousing issues, and the speed with which they can solve issues. In addition to complete architectural services, M&D provides a range of cohousing consulting services. If you are an architect yourself, you might be interested in exploring employment opportunities at M&D, which has an immediate opening for a cohousing architect in their Nevada City, California offices. Send letter of interest to charles.durrett [at] cohousingco [dot] com.

Prompted by the success of the Arcadia neighborhood in Carrboro, NC, in the late 1990s, architect Giles Blunden offers a variety of architectural services to cohousing communities. Blunden Studios consciously designs neighborhoods that address critical issues of environmental impact and the building of relationships. Sustainability is achived by supporting community building, protecting environmental resources, encouraging diversity and providing affordable housing. Giles Blunden has more than 30 years of experience designing houses utilizing sustainable design principles such as passive and active solar, use of renewable and local materials, and consistency with the local vernacular.
919-967-8505
Blunden Studio - website (www.blundenstudio.com)