Re: Creating more affordable cohousing - a personal story... | <– Date –> <– Thread –> |
From: Sharon Villines (sharonsharonvillines.com) | |
Date: Sat, 29 Dec 2012 10:03:51 -0800 (PST) |
On Dec 29, 2012, at 11:44 AM, Ann Zabaldo <zabaldo [at] earthlink.net> wrote: > So if you're selling or renting on the open market and John or Mary Doe comes > to purchase or rent and meets all other qualifications you must sell or rent > to him or her. As I understand it from experts, though they are not lawyers, this is not exactly true. You can have reasons other than race, color, national origin, religion, sex, familial status, or disability. You can reject buyers on other grounds. Discrimination suits usually require a history of suspected abuses or be pretty obvious. If 5 gay couples have been rejected not just by one buyer but the whole community, that's a pattern. In a neighborhood with no Hispanic residents that is surrounded by Hispanic communities, the case is strong. And it still has to be proven. In cohousing, there are usually very good examples of people living in the community that could be used to demonstrate that the protected classes are not discriminated against. The marketing materials are likely to welcome people who are different. In cohousing as a movement, there are many, many examples of communities inviting the protected classes. Wikipedia articles: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_housing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Fair_Housing_and_Equal_Opportunity The Communities Association Institute has done articles on this. One thing they caution about that can affect cohousing is loose lips. One Board member's casual question about whether the community can handle another person with disabilities or is becoming dominated with couples or singles can be unreasonably misinterpreted as a community position and used as evidence. At my college we couldn't ask questions about a person's family being willing to move 200 miles for them to take a job or whether commuting was realistic. While this was important in judging whether this person would be a fully available worker or one who would stay on the job long-term, it was viewed as possible discrimination based on familial status, and certainly a personal question unrelated to stated qualifications. Loose lips is a reason to have knowledgable people showing houses and doing pre-sales interviewing. When everyone is involved it can be a problem. They need to be educated. > You can design a home w/ a suite for each member while you share the common > areas. Think of mansions & castles where each cluster of an extended family (and the staff) had a wing. > Work w/ a professional developer. No matter how much you THINK you can save, > a professional developer will save you time, energy and money. As Ann knows after developing two cohousing communities and working on several others, it takes many years to learn how to develop residential real estate. You can't learn it off-the-cuff without paying the same price the developer has already paid to learn from other professionals and then to learn from their mistakes. Developing your own community as many early communities did because there were no willing developers will cost you a bundle resulting in more expensive housing. That's where cohousing got the reputation for being composed of exclusively middle-class communities -- only the middle class could afford to take the risks. (Yes, I know not all were middle-class and some units were affordable, but on the whole people making $24,000 a year with no assets were not able to even think of living in cohousing.) Sharon ---- Sharon Villines Takoma Village Cohousing, Washington DC http://www.takomavillage.org
- Re: Creating more affordable cohousing - a personal story..., (continued)
- Re: Creating more affordable cohousing - a personal story... Elizabeth Magill, December 29 2012
- Re: Creating more affordable cohousing - a personal story... Ann Zabaldo, December 29 2012
- Re: Creating more affordable cohousing - a personal story... Elizabeth Magill, December 29 2012
- Re: Creating more affordable cohousing - a personal story... Doug Huston, December 29 2012
- Re: Creating more affordable cohousing - a personal story... Sharon Villines, December 29 2012
Results generated by Tiger Technologies Web hosting using MHonArc.