Community Tours

A personal visit to a variety of cohousing communities offers you an experience that no photo, website or book can offer. To provide you with this opportunity, the Cohousing Association of the United States (Coho/US) sponsors daylong tours of cohousing communities in several areas around the nation. An experienced cohouser or cohousing professional will take you to visit five to seven communities. As you travel between locations on a comfortable bus, the tour leader will give participants a chance to introduce themselves, share general information about cohousing, answer questions, provide fact sheets and site plans, and prepare you for your 40-60-minute visit to each community. At each stop, a community host (often a long-time resident) will guide your group through his or her neighborhood and answer questions. Fact sheets with site maps and contact information for each community will be available for you.

We will be hosting two tours this fall; one in Seattle, WA and the other in Portland, OR. Please check back often for tour dates and community locations.

If you are interested in touring a cohousing community, please contact Coho/US.

Cohousing Conference California Tours June 13-15

These rolling workshops on a biodiesel bus will take you to area communities so that you can experience and learn about cohousing first hand by visiting existing communities in the area and talking with residents. Your primary guide is Karen Hester, founding member of Temescal Creek Cohousing, a retrofit community in North Oakland, and she will be supported by other cohousing enthusiasts.

Tentative schedule

(pending approval from the communities)

Wednesday, June 13h
Full-day North Bay Tour

8:30-8:45am pick up at Marriott
8:45-10 drive to Santa Rosa
10:00-11:00- tour Yulupa
11:00-11:30 travel
11:30-1:00 tour and lunch at Two Acre Wood
1:00-1:15 travel
1:15-2:00 tour Petaluma Cohousing (an unique affordable-housing rental)
2:00-2:30 travel
2:30-3:30 tour Frog Song
3:30-5:15pm travel back to Marriott

Thurs, June 14th
Full-day East Bay Tour

8:30-8:45am meet at Swan’s Market Cohousing
8:45-9:45 tour Swan’s Market
9:45-10:30 travel
10:30-11:30 tour Pleasant Hill
11:30-12:15 travel
12:15-1:30 lunch and tour at Temescal Creek
1:30-1:45 travel
1:45-2:45 tour Doyle Street
2:45-3 travel
3:00-4:00 tour Berkeley Cohousing
4:00-4:30pm travel back to Marriott

Friday, June 15th
Retrofit Workshop and
Part-day Communities Tour

Retrofit cohousing – communities developed from existing housing stock or buildings– represents an opportunity to develop cohousing under a potentially faster and easier model. Although this model is seemingly less common than the conventional newly built cohousing model, there are many retrofit (or partially retrofit) cohousing communities that have been thriving for years.

How does retrofit cohousing differ from conventional cohousing? What are the ingredients that make it successful? What are the challenges? What does retrofit cohousing look like, anyway?

Learn from panelists who have pioneered and studied the successful models. You will be provided with in-depth descriptions of successful retrofit communities and will find out how the retrofit model can save years of development time. Gain insights into what tradeoffs are required and learn how to develop your forming group into one that can successful transcend the challenges. Hear how the retrofit communities differ from one another. Learn the basics on how to find the right property, how to afford a common house, what some of the key legal challenges are, and what some of the major practical considerations are.

Following the two-hour workshop, you will tour successful retrofit cohousing communities, and throughout the day, have opportunities to continue to learn from and query experienced retrofit cohousers.

Karen Hester and Jennifer Ryan will lead the workshop and tour and will be joined by retrofit cohousing panelists.

8:00–10:00 am Workshop at Marriott
10:00-10:15 break
10:15 10:30 pick up Marriott
10:30-10:45 travel
10:45-11:45 tour Berkeley Cohousing
11:45-12:05 travel
12:05-1:30 lunch and tour at Temescal Creek
1:30-1:40 travel
1:40-2:40 tour Rockridge
2:40-2:50 travel
2:50-3:50 tour Mariposa Grove
3:50-4pm travel back to Marriott

Biographies:
Karen Hester was the force behind the creation of Temescal Creek Cohousing, an 11 unit retrofit community in North Oakland. In 1999, she joined with four other households, adding 6 more homes and a common house over the next thirteen years. She has also successfully consulted with three East Bay retrofit communities, helping them get started. Karen is a community activist and an events coordinator, organizing major events such as Bites Off Broadway (Oakland's first recurring food pod), Rockridge Out and About and the Temescal Street Fair. She is a bike enthusiast and world traveler.

Jennifer Ryan lives Temescal Creek Cohousing. In 2009, she and her partner Bill, relocated to the Bay Area after three-plus decades in Washington DC. Jennifer also lived in two other cohousing communities, Doyle Street (Emeryville, CA) and Takoma Village (Washington DC). She participated in two forming groups and has visited some 40 communities in over a dozen states. Jennifer is a lawyer, and she is semiretired from her career in the publishing industry. She is involved in social justice projects in Oakland and in Washington DC.