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Partnerships for Affordable Cohousing

Submitted by catya on Wed, 11/23/2011 - 09:41
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By Jerome Garciano

I am pleased to announce the launch of a new non-profit organization, Partnerships for Affordable Cohousing, Inc. (PFAC). Its mission is to develop and provide permanently affordable cohousing homes throughout the United States. PFAC partners with local and national groups to support affordable cohousing for low- and moderate-income families and individuals. Please see http://www.affordablecohousing.org for more information.

Please contact myself (jgarciano [at] edwardswildman [dot] com) or Rick Keller, President of PFAC, (richart [dot] keller [at] gmail [dot] com) if you are interested in partnering with PFAC in its mission. Specifically we are looking for people to serve on our board of directors or board of advisors. We are also planning to form a group of private investors to create an investment fund to financially support affordable cohousing. If you have any interest in exploring either of these areas please contact us.

Veteran's Cohousing: Combining Military Training with Cohousing Principles to Produce Supportive Housing

Submitted by catya on Tue, 07/12/2011 - 09:42
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By Yoomie Ahn and Laura Fitch

As the Iraq and Afghanistan wars wind down and the federal budget deficit necessitates cuts in defense spending, thoughtful Americans (and board members of the National Cohousing Association) are thinking about ways to ease the transition from military service to civilian life for those who have served the country. A recent Army Times article reported...

Full article at http://www.cohousing.org/veteranscohousing

Have Conscience, Will Build: A Developer Reflects on Cohousing

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Jim Leach, Wonderland Hill Development Company, Boulder, Colorado

If cohousers resemble the European frontier folk who settled America, it’s not difficult to picture developer Jim Leach in a buckskin coat. In a variety of ways, he’s in the vanguard, leading the movement to resettle America. In addition to being the developer of Silver Sage Village, an experiment in elder cohousing, Jim and his wife, Brownie, will also live there. DLW

Like a flame draws a moth, cohousing attracts a certain type of house builder. I’m afraid I am one of those types, as are many of my friends and associates. Somewhere in the back of our minds, we think we are going to save the world, our country, or at least our hometown from environmental and social degradation through the quality of the housing we create. This challenge keeps a lot of us going in an industry that is full of political adversity and economic risk.

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.

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