Mainstream Appeal
From: Mac Thomson (machappyvalley.com)
Date: Sat, 14 Oct 1995 12:17:26 -0500
The recent discussion about the"base model" of cohousing touches on an issue
that was addressed at the conference, but not satisfactorily resolved in my
mind.  It seemed that at the 94 conference there was much more discussion
about how to get the "extras" in your cohousing community: affordability,
sustainability, and diversity of every kind.  One of the themes of this
year's conference seemed to be that just creating a "base model" cohousing
community was a ton of work and if a group set out to create the "base model"
plus all the "extras", the project would likely be too big and either not get
done or drive away people that would like to live in cohousing, but who
weren't willing to spend 4000 hours to make it happen.

There seemed to be general agreement that there are lots more people that
would like to live in cohousing than there are people that would like to live
in cohousing AND are willing to go through all the work to make it happen. 
This makes sense to me.  So what we need to be working on (and what I think
this year's conference focused on to some degree) is how to make creating
cohousing easier.  If we can do that, we will greatly broaden our market. 
That is, we may be able to begin to appeal to the mainstream.

This strategy looks good, but my question is, based on the short history of
cohousing in America, has it proved to be true?  Where a core group has gone
to all the work to create a cohousing neighborhood, have available units been
snapped up?  It seems that if there's a big market out there yearning for
community, but not wanting to become real estate developers, existing
cohousing units should be easy to sell.  Is this happening?

I've seen numerous ads for units at Winslow and Santa Fe, and it seems that
Highline Crossing has had trouble selling their units even though the bulk of
the work has been done.

Now that we have a bit of history to lood at, I think that we need to examine
this assumption that if cohousing is easy to buy into, we'll have lots of
people wanting to do it - maybe even mainstream appeal.

I realize that creating a better way for the mainstream to live is not the
only goal of creating cohousing, but I do feel that it's a significant one. 
I'm also, of course, working to create cohousing for the selfish reason of
wanting a better place for me, my family, and my friends to live.

    Mac Thomson                         San Juan Cohousing
    Mac [at] HappyValley.com           Durango, Colorado

  "I used to be an agnostic, but now I'm not so sure."


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