Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: How to develop a group for 50+ without family

[Stuart Joseph (stuart]

MaryAlice,

Fred H Olson wrote:
> I know what you mean about "affordable".  Affordable and 1,000 sq. ft. ,
> for the most part, don't exist.
What do you consider affordable? A First Day Cottage can be built for 
$60.00 per square foot without labor costs or the land costs. If you do 
the building yourself, a 1,000 sq. foot house would be about $60,000.00 
for everything, unless you have to install an exotic septic system.  If 
you hire out the labor, you can figure that it will take 1/2-3/4 of an 
hour per square foot of house, depending upon the type of house you are 
building. You can figure your labor costs from that, depending upon what 
you pay someone to build the house and how much you are willing to do 
yourself.

Since the houses are designed to be built by someone with no experience, 
you won't need to hire the most qualified carpenter you can find. In 
fact, First day discourages folks from using a regular carpenter because 
they "know better" and won't follow the FD instructions. FD also has 
folks that have built their own FD Cottages and will build for others, 
their rates run about $20.00 per hour.
>    I'm like you in that I have no family any
> more (never did have too many) and am looking for a small living space,
> designed well, of course.
First Day actually designs the house for you within the parameters of 
their building system.
>   That's what attracted me to learn more about
> co-housing.  So far, I'm not finding that, but I'll keep reading and
> searching, and maybe something will enter my radar screen one of these
> days.
>
>   

Good luck.

>   MaryAlice
>   Indiana
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--
Stuart Joseph, 802-463-1954
Project Director
Caer Coburn, a traditional village based upon cohousing  and intentional 
communities in
Rockingham, Vermont, USA
http://www.caercoburn.org
Mail to:
36 Front St.
Bellows Falls, VT 05101 USA