Creating Cohousing

It is the eve of the 2008 Cohousing Conference. It has been 20 years since the concept of cohousing was introduced to an increasingly transient and anonymous American population. It therefore seems like a natural time to step back and survey the movement’s current state, as well as its trajectory – to measure our successes and to recognize the work that lies ahead.

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.

The question must have gone through the collective consciousness of more than one cohousing group over the years: “Can we convince affordable housing developers to build affordable cohousing communities?” To the surprise of many cohousers, the answer is actually “yes.”

A glance at a detailed map of U.S. cohousing communities would show that most of us are living in areas of relatively high property values: on the coasts, in college towns or on the outskirts of high-tech growth centers. That’s one reason why making cohousing affordable to the widest possible number of people has been of intense interest to prospective community members throughout the history of the cohousing movement.

Cohousing can serve a variety of purposes and take different forms. But one exciting approach is a hybrid of cohousing and the ecovillage – what I call an eco-community. Here your monthly mortgage payment does double-duty. Not only do you create a new cohousing community, you also help the environment immediately around you. You might get a spectacular park or forest for your backyard, to boot. It can be a win-win situation for everyone.

When our community, East Lake Commons, held its first formal meeting in 1997, one of the first official decisions was that all the units would be designed with two features making each home “visitable” by members with mobility impairments: at least one entrance with zero steps, and at least a half-bathroom on the main floor, with a door wide enough for wheelchair passage.

Cohousing has matured in many respects since it immigrated to the U.S., but none so much as the development structures or the financial savvy of cohousers themselves. Since future residents expect to be involved in the design of the future neighborhood, the instruments for conventionally financed development don’t always work in the same way. Consequently, in the process of learning about real estate development and financing, cohousers are reinventing them.

These are some of the elements to consider working on in the first months you spend together. This assumes you have brought together a core group of at least two or three households. Three or four households is even better.

This year’s National Cohousing Conference was a treasure trove of useful information for established cohousing communities and forming groups. One of the more visionary, yet practical, sessions was a presentation on renewal energy led by Mark Daugherty, energy systems consultant and chief technology officer for Great Lakes BioFuels in Madison, WI, and Bryan Bowen, a Colorado-based architect, specializing in low-impact, environment-friendly housing design. Attendees learned about some sobering trends on peak oil and global warming, along with positive steps that cohousing communities are uniquely qualified to take.

This is a historic moment on Planet Earth. Life as we know it is about to change dramatically as global climate change accelerates, and as we reach “Peak Oil,” when demand outstrips supply for fossil fuels that are increasingly hard to extract. As we look toward a future in which our traditional energy sources are severely depleted, cohousing neighborhoods have an increasingly important role to play in modeling a greener lifestyle.

Most cohousing communities in the U.S. are newly built neighborhoods with the homes arrayed along a pedestrian street or clustered around a courtyard, in close proximity to the community’s common house. But new construction is expensive and building sites in urban areas are few, so some people are finding ways to adapt existing blocks of housing and to change usage patterns to develop what is commonly called “retrofit cohousing.”

In March 1999, after only three months of meetings, a group of five families opened escrow on Temescal Creek Cohousing, a "retrofit" cohousing neighborhood in Oakland, CA. They're called a retrofit community because they transformed an existing neighborhood into a cohousing community, rather than building from the ground up.

I actually had no experience with cohousing when members of Oak Creek Commons first approached me about the possibility of becoming the project manager for their community. The group already had worked for about a year with a professional whose offices were outside of the area, but had discovered they needed a local, hands-on project manager who could navigate them through the many steps of constructing their new community.

The kitchen and "great room" are the two most important spaces in a common house, they should feel like a natural extension of each individual home. Your community can begin to create this homey environment during the design process by allowing everyone to have a say and ownership in the decisions. The design itself, balancing functional requirements with coziness, is equally important.

Like a flame draws a moth, cohousing attracts a certain type of house builder. Somewhere in the back of our minds we think we can save the world, our country or at least our hometown from environmental and social degradation through the quality of the housing - and communities - we create. This challenge keeps many of us going in an industry full of political adversity and economic risk.