RE: Re: Elitist lifestyle or public good? | <– Date –> <– Thread –> |
From: Marci Malinowycz (SoDanceclassic.msn.com) | |
Date: Mon, 20 Oct 1997 02:19:30 -0500 |
You don't say what area you are in, and you don't offer a price comparison with similar-sized non-cohousing homes in your area. Here in Seattle, the original prices of Puget Ridge Cohousing's condos three years ago ranged from $80K for 1BR to over $200K for 4BR, which is pretty typical for new-construction urban condos in this area. In this project, we do not have any subsidized or designated affordable units. I don't think it is fair to expect cohousing, either the "movement" such as it is or any individual group struggling to build their own homes, to solve the problem of affordable housing. Cohousing didn't invent the high cost of housing. We don't escape the unfortunate reality of the housing situation in this country by choosing cohousing. Not that there aren't some good solutions being developed by a few cohousing groups out there. More power to any cohousing group that is making headway on the problem. With luck, other groups can learn from those successes, as well. One more thought, regarding expensive versions of cohousing: Given the fact that we do have economic inequities and that some people can afford and do choose to buy expensive houses, it seems to me better for society overall if at least a few of them choose to live in connected community rather than in isolated fortresses. -- Marci Malinowycz Puget Ridge Cohousing, Seattle (206) 763-2623 sodance [at] msn.com ---------- From: cohousing-l [at] freedom.mtn.org on behalf of BilodeauA [at] aol.com Sent: Thursday, October 16, 1997 3:22 PM Subject: Re: Re: Elitist lifestyle or public good? Hi folks: I've been monitoring this list for about six months, in the hopes that I could find ideas that would get me into a cohousing situation myself. Well, I've concluded that there is indeed some kind of serious disconnect between what ordinarily people can afford and what co-housers are doing. One project in my area is charging about $300,000 per home for the project, from the estimates they sent me. Now you tell me -- are people who make enough to pay $300,000 mortgages filled with free time to hang with their co-housing brethren? Or are they more likely to be invisible mortgage payers who scarcely know their neighbors, if at all, given their heavy professional schedules? (I know that I couldn't afford such a mortgage, though I have a pretty highly paid professional job. It takes all of my free time just to make the money I DO have, and one of my principal concerns is that I wouldn't have enough to give (time and relationship wise) to make it worth moving in with my friends.) I know that both of those pictures I've painted are extreme, and that actual projects will fall somewhere in between a hippie love fest and a tarted up suburban development project. But I do see a serious problem with the whole idea if my friends and I couldn't possibly afford to live together even we want to do so. (And we do!) Maybe someone here has lived on or knows more about kibbutzim...how do they solve this problem? - Anne
- Re: Re: Elitist lifestyle or public good?, (continued)
- Re: Re: Elitist lifestyle or public good? BilodeauA, October 16 1997
- Re: Elitist lifestyle or public good? Paul Barton-Davis, October 16 1997
- RE: Elitist lifestyle or public good? Rob Sandelin, October 16 1997
- Re: Elitist lifestyle or public good? Dahako, October 17 1997
- RE: Re: Elitist lifestyle or public good? Marci Malinowycz, October 20 1997
- Elitist lifestyle or public good? K. Collins & friends, October 20 1997
- RE: Elitist lifestyle or public good? Rob Sandelin, October 20 1997
- Elitist lifestyle or public good? K. Collins & friends, October 22 1997
- Re: Elitist lifestyle or public good? Mary Scholl, October 23 1997
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