RE: Re: Elitist lifestyle or public good?
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


Results generated by Tiger Technologies Web hosting using MHonArc.