Re: Cohousing and Economic Hardships
From: balaji (balajiouraynet.com)
Date: Wed, 8 Oct 2008 15:14:34 -0700 (PDT)
Dear Zev,

You pose an important question.  Perhaps one answer is to suggest that a
resiliant cohousing community is one that provides for fall-back positions
in times of economic turmoil.  The most important among these positions is
agriculture:  people who lose their jobs can always come back to the farm
and help produce food.  Our cohousing group, the Utah Valley Commons, is
being designed with such an option in mind.  We will have sufficient land
to grow up to 50% of our own food, and people can (we hope) consider
farming an option for full-time labor.  Non-resilent communities are those
that cannot provide an agricultural fall-back, and are limited, in
consequence, to the fragile structures of the mainstream service economy. 
The other important factor is redundancy.  We live in a society that views
redundancy as inefficient -- why should everyone know how to farm when
only takes a tiny minority to produce the food?  The future will show, I
believe, that redundancy is good because it provides a margin of safety in
times of distress.  One "pays" for this advantage by putting up with
marginal efficiencies in the boom times.

We, therefore, are designing a community with multiple redundancies and a
central fall-back position in farming.

Charles Nuckolls
Utah Valley Commons
www.utahvalleycommons.com

>
> Hello Cohousing Neighbors,
>
> One of the advantages of living in cohousing is having a more
> interactive relationship with our neighbors. Given this, I would like
> to propose a timely conversation that might be a good one to have
> given the challenging economic times we are in.
>
> How might we deal with a futuristic scenario where several of us have
> lost our jobs, have fallen behind on our mortgage payments and are
> facing forclosure? I am NOT saying this will happen, but I thought it
> would be enlightening for us to have this conversation BEFORE it
> actually happen and to use this to help generate useful conversations
> in the 113 cohousing communities around the country.
>
> What do you all think?
>
>
> Zev
>
> Zev Paiss
> Abraham Paiss & Associates
> Building Sustainable Communities Since 1992
> 1460 Quince Ave. #102
> Boulder, CO 80304
> 303-413-8066
> Zev [at] AbrahamPaiss.com
> www.AbrahamPaiss.com
>
> ü Please consider the environment before printing this email.
>
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