Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Affordable Unit Lotteries

[Elizabeth Stevenson (tamgoddess]

I would strongly discourage that method of selling the affordable units. See
if you can make a deal with the city that your group will pre-qualify the
buyers of those units. the history of people getting into cohousing just for
the affordability is not good-it's dismal, in fact. We had one person who
caused us much grief before moving out. If we had had ten of them, we would
not have survived as a cohousing community.

Try to explain the nature of cohousing to the city and see if there's
someone sympathetic to your plans for cohousing. Let them know that there is
a poor history of success where price is the only motivation. Maybe you can
get someone to listen.


-- 
Liz Stevenson
Southside Park Cohousing
Sacramento California
tamgoddess [at] attbi.com


> From: Diane Simpson <coho [at] theworld.com>
> Reply-To: cohousing-l [at] cohousing.org
> Date: Sat, 25 May 2002 15:14:17 -0500
> To: Cohousing List <cohousing-l [at] cohousing.org>
> Subject: [C-L]_Affordable Unit Lotteries
> 
> Hi everyone in coho-land!
> 
> The City of Boston requires any developments of 10 or more houses
> to have 10% affordable units.  The way the city likes to deal with
> the affordable units is by having a lottery for them drawn from
> a city-wide pool of applicants. Are there any other cohousing
> groups who had to go through a similar process and did the
> results work or not work for you?
> 
> --Diane Simpson(:^]
> Jamaica Plain Cohousing, Boston Massachusetts
> 
>> * #6 - Affordable Housing concept: there seem to be  multiple
>> ways of addressing this item (the Boston way with the allocated
>> units and the lottery and the Cohousing way with the internal
>> supportive policies  minus the lottery).  From my memories of
>> the Thursday night discussion, it seems  that there are some
>> varying opinions on this lottery issue. Is it  possible for the
>> lottery to work within the project model? Have any of the
>> nation's previous cohousing projects had to meet similar
>> affordability  requirements and they were able to execute
>> it successfully?
> 
> "The people around you define the quality of your life."
> Ask me about Cohousing!   http://jpcohousing.org
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