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Affordability

You can also search the Cohousing-L email archives for postings containing "Affordability".
Take a look at the list of pages below from throughout the Cohousing
Website, including blog entries, articles, and descriptions of past and future events.
All of these are related to Affordability!

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Growing Smart Communities: Mid Atlantic Cohousing Regional Conference March 20

Submitted by Mid Atlantic Co... on Thu, 03/04/2010 - 01:00
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By Raines Cohen, Cohousing Coach

Are you passionate about community? Join me this month for a one-day in the Mid-Atlantic Region. Growing Smart Communities: Mid Atlantic Cohousing Conference

What: Cohousing: Growing Smart Communities
When: Saturday, March 20, 2010
Followed by area community visits on Sunday.

Come rub shoulders, elbows and toes with the people who have created, are creating or helping others to create their cohousing community. This is YOUR regional conference for those of you who are building cohousing, living in cohousing, interested in the idea, or who are professionals in the field.

New Hampshire Governor visits state's only cohousing neighborhood

Submitted by Cohousing Coaches on Thu, 07/23/2009 - 04:59
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By Raines Cohen, Cohousing Coach

According to story in today's Union Leader, New Hampshire Governor John Lynch yesterday toured Nubanusit Neighborhood & Farm, the state's first completed cohousing neighborhood.

He wasn't the first New Hampshire Governor to walk the Peterborough property, though: the community was built in 2008 on the historic homestead of Gov. John Steele (1789-1865), and the basement of his renovated now super-insulated home (now offices) houses the ultra-efficient renewably-fueled wood-pellet-burning boilers that circulate heat and supply hot water to the 29 homes clustered onto just five of the 113 acres, preserving extensive woods and farmland, the story notes.

Affordable Cohousing: One Town, Two Solutions.

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Saturday 4:30 – 5:30 pm
There are many people who would like to live in cohousing are not financially able to purchase a home at market rates. How can we expand the cohousing movement to include more economic diversity? The city of Sebastopol, California boasts two brand-new cohousing communities for lower-income residents. Sequoia Village, developed by Burbank Housing and built with sweat equity, utilizes a home ownership model; Affordable Housing Associates’ Petaluma Avenue Homes is an all-rental project. Come hear how these projects got built, and share the excitement of their just-moved-in residents!

PRESENTERS: Sara Downing is a resident of Sequoia Village. Eris Weaver is the Cohousing Consultant for Petaluma Avenue Homes.

Incorporating Affordable Units into Urban Cohousing: A University of Washington Architecture Student Project

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Half Day Workshop: Fri 8:30 – 12:00

Special FREE Workshop

Graduate students at UW studied 3 urban sites in Seattle for hypothetical cohousing projects. They worked with a “client group” that included cohousing residents and a non-profit affordable housing developer. The student projects will be on display in Gould Court but this session will give forum for some of the students to present their projects; the “clients” to give comments on what aspects of the project were realistic / problematic; and how affordable units could be incorporated into real cohousing projects. Conference attendees are invited to come listen, learn, and ask question of the students and “clients”. This free session is intended to bring ideas to forming and existing groups on how they can incorporate affordable units into their community, thereby integrating people of mixed incomes and backgrounds into cohousing.

Affordable Cohousing: Making the Numbers Work

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Half Day Workshop: Thur 1:30 – 5:00

Price: $60

Provides an overview of strategies currently in use in cohousing, and an introduction to the steps that a forming group can take early on to identify the most promising opportunities for them, and how even building groups can increase affordability in their projects. Topics to be covered include technical and practical definitions of affordability, building your case, and finding the right partners. We'll go over basics of inclusionary zoning, affordable-housing finance. In this extended format, we'll go through the basic budgets of cohousing developments and look at how to increase affordability in three different, sometimes complementary, often contradictory ways:

  • Spend less (aka "build cheap") (but still make it nice enough that people want to buy it)
  • Use internal price allocations (i.e. charge more for some units to make others more affordable)

Planning: Integrating Affordable Units Into Cohousing Communities

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Bob Engler

How can non-professionals succeed in taking on the role of “developer”? How can communities succeed in making affordable units a significant part of the their development projects? How and when should cohousing groups seek outside help and advice? This session covers these questions and more in a presentation of “The Housing Delivery Process.” A thorough familiarity with this process will help groups get from vision to permitting approvals, to financing, to construction. The focus will be on a specific set of critical decisions, and the key considerations that will help your group navigate your way to making the best choices.

Planning: Working With Non-Profit Developers to Create Affordable Rental Cohousing

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Brad Gunkel, Eris Weaver

While many groups are looking for ways to create greater affordability in cohousing, many non-profit developers are looking for ways to create tightly knit communities in their affordable developments. Is this a marriage made in heaven? Or do institutionalized restrictions on non-profit developers make this partnership too encumbered to be worth pursuing? The reality tends to be somewhere in the middle and may be worth considering. Learn about the process and challenges of working with non-profit developers to create affordable rental cohousing through an interactive discussion with the architect and group process consultant for one such community.

Planning: Getting Real, Making it Affordable: Strategies in Cohousing

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Betsy Morris, Don Tucker

Provides an overview of strategies currently in use in cohousing, and an introduction to the steps that a forming group can take early on to identify the most promising opportunities for them. Topics include defining affordability, building your case, and finding the right partners.

Betsy Morris lives at Berkeley Cohousing and serves as research director for Coho/US. She is a long-time community and economic development planning and research consultant, with over 20 years experience on the east and west coasts. She has developed trainings for grassroots leaders, and created neighborhood housing plans with an emphasis on affordable housing. She has a Masters and Doctorate in City and Regional Planning.

Consultant: Cohousing Coaches / Planning for Sustainable Communities

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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.

Making cohousing affordable: Strategies and successes, part 3 of 3

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by Renee Hart, a founding member of CoHo Ecovillage

There was little doubt in anyone’s mind that Mike Volpe, the president of CoHo Ecovillage, was meant to have a home there, in the cohousing community now being built in Corvallis, Oregon. Mike wasn’t nearly as optimistic. Owning a home would mean giving up his Medicaid benefits, and that simply wasn’t an option. Mike has had primary progressive Multiple Sclerosis since he was 23. This particular form of MS is relentless in its pursuit, and it pursued Mike’s health with a vengeance, gradually taking away his ability to walk, to move his hands, and to see clearly.

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