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Creating Cohousing

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Creating Rituals - Welcoming New Members

Submitted by Daybreak Cohousing on Fri, 08/14/2009 - 19:39
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Terri Huggett, Daybreak Cohousing

In a recent post I talked about the aprons we use as part of our welcoming ceremony for new members. And I haven’t put it into the context of our overall welcoming ceremony.

As with our community, our welcoming ceremony is informal and homey. And it still has a little structure. The idea was to make the ceremony a re-bonding experience for everyone and a simple, but heart-felt welcome. At their inception, rituals can feel a bit home-spun, but they build quickly and don’t need to be elaborate.

New cohousing group sought for downtown Oakland, CA site

Submitted by East Bay Cohousing on Mon, 07/06/2009 - 10:39
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By Joani Blank, Raines Cohen, and Betsy Morris

Potential Downtown Oakland (California) Cohousing siteYou could be a future resident of a new-build cohousing community in downtown Oakland close to the subway (a very short ride to downtown San Francisco), City Hall, The new "Uptown" neighborhood, and the First Unitarian Church of Oakland (FUCO).

It takes time, energy and money contributed by the future-resident group to get a cohousing community built. Finding suitable sites at a reasonable cost in the Bay Area has been very difficult for many years... so when a site like the one described here becomes available, we're inclined to jump at the chance to see if a future resident group (as well as some outside investors) can be assembled.

A Family Story and a Blessing Way

Submitted by Daybreak Cohousing on Wed, 06/24/2009 - 00:06
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Tiffany Yelton Bram, Daybreak Cohousing

Raising a Family in Cohousing, Part 1

Cohousing is often touted as ideal for families. As a mom in a developing community, I thought it would be good to capture how cohousing shapes our family and how family shapes this community.

Let's begin at the beginning. My name is Tiffany and I moved to Portland, Oregon, at the start of 2006. I lived in Seattle and my husband-to-be lived in Portland. Since my family lives in Oregon and my husband loves Portland like a friend, I made the move here.

The first thing we did was to find a nice place to rent to give us time to think about how and where we wanted to live. Alex, my hubby, had been following a listserv about cohousing in Portland and he told me what he knew about it. Intrigued, I agreed to go to some of the meetings that different forming groups announced on the listserv. I went to a cohousing social on my own and met the folks starting Daybreak Cohousing (then Sunrise Cohousing). I told Alex that he had to meet them too.

Establishing Community Rituals

Submitted by Daybreak Cohousing on Tue, 05/19/2009 - 23:42
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by Terri Huggett

Part of the joy and struggle of creating a new community is creating the threads that hold us together. In our society and in our workplace, we often take for granted the structures and rituals that help us identify with each other. Many entrepeneurs have experienced the process of building a business AND a culture from the ground up. Communities aren’t much different.

Sharing Suppers

Submitted by Daybreak Cohousing on Sun, 04/26/2009 - 20:24
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By Sterling Newberry

At various times, we at Daybreak Cohousing have felt the strain of so much work to do in developing our future home. We realized early on that we needed to be especially conscious of building in pure social time as a balance to all our work, and to ensure that our extended family relationships grow along with the infrastructure.

Our Sharing Suppers were started to give us planned and very flexible social time together. The sharing suppers are scheduled, twice monthly affairs. We set the dates ahead of time, attempting to place them such that they are not too close to other community activities. And then ask for a volunteer host.

Building Community. Learning from others while not attempting to duplicate

Submitted by Daybreak Cohousing on Thu, 03/26/2009 - 21:16
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By Terri Huggett, Daybreak Cohousing

As one of the co-founders of Daybreak Cohousing, I spent a lot of time in the early stages researching what communities who had come before us had done to build their communities, both physically and as people. The Get It Built Workshop by Katie McCamant and Rick Mockler of Cohousing Partners gave me a solid overview and foundation in the overall process and I highly recommend it. I found a wealth of generosity and information on Cohousing_L and in talking with folks in our local communities here in Portland, Cascadia Commons, Trillium Hollow and Penninsula Park Commons.

Guiding a Community Home

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Matt Worswick, Harmony Village, Golden, Colorado, and Synergy Design

When I began to look into joining a cohousing community, I went to several groups’ meetings and was especially impressed by the approach and good energy of the group that would become Harmony Village. The original members, Matt Worswick and his wife, Linda, seemed to have the right stuff to make the dream a reality. Walking through the process of designing our own community was an exciting, challenging experience I can never forget, going from a blurry idea to a custom-fit place to be in seventy-five meetings or less! DLW

Community without Walls

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Sunday 8:30 – 10:00 am
Many forming communities put lots of attention on the legal, financial, design and other business aspects of building our physical space. It is just as critical that we emphasize the ‘development’ of the community of people who will be living, working and playing together BEFORE we do live in the same place. Terri will discuss ways 1) to create community bonds early, 2) to develop and present your ‘community-face’ to possible members, 3) to work with the challenges that arise as your community grows, and 4) to cultivate and nurture communication skills to face those challenges. She will use examples and stories from Daybreak and other communities to illustrate the many options available to your community.

AUDience: Forming and Building communities

PRESENTER: Terri Huggett is a co-founder of Daybreak Cohousing, a community in Portland, Oregon currently under construction.

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.

Community Values and Legal Structures: Pros and Cons of LLCs, Co-ops, and Community Land Trusts.

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Sunday 8:30 – 10:00 am
The session will use Robina McCurdy's work with Mandalas to first explore our deepest values related to community, ownership, land stewardship and sharing. Then we will review the differences between LLC and Co-op legal structures and examine how well they support our deepest communal values. We will also discuss Community Land Trusts and what they might offer regarding implementing our values.

AUDIENCE: forming groups

PRESENTER: Kees Kolff, retired physician and former medical director of SeaMar Community Health Centers, is a co-founder, along with his wife Helen, of the Port Townsend EcoVillage. He is also former mayor of Port Townsend, Washington.

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