Pioneering/Building in Disadvantaged Neighborhoods/Gentrification
From: David Heimann (heimanntheworld.com)
Date: Sun, 5 Apr 2009 14:10:13 -0700 (PDT)

Hi Cora,

Our units wound up being priced for around the cost of most new condo construction in Jamaica Plain, and prices for the developments around us were mostly higher, so we didn't gentrify the neighborhood all that much. If we hadn't found leachable lead in our land, the gentrification would have been even less!

As far as banks financing our units, we had little or no problems, since the pricing was indeed in the community's price range. We also had (have) both formal and informal affordability programs so that a significant number in the community did not need be to "households of means".

        All the best on your efforts!

Regards,
David Heimann
Jamaica Plain Cohousing


On Fri, 3 Apr 2009 cohousing-l-request [at] cohousing.org wrote:

Date: Wed, 1 Apr 2009 21:38:33 GMT
From: "Cora Roelofs" <corar2000 [at] netzero.com>
Subject: [C-L]_ Pioneering/Building in Disadvantaged
        Neighborhoods/Gentrification
To: cohousing-l [at] cohousing.org
Message-ID: <20090401.173833.17281.0 [at] webmail04.dca.untd.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252

We're in the site search and working with a development partner. I was 
wondering about any experiences related to developing cohousing in economically 
disadvantaged neighborhoods.
I know that Swan's Market played a role in the re-development of downtown Oakland and I'm 
curious about others' experience with their site selection process and predicting the 
future of a neighborhood without high housing prices. There are lots of comments that 
could be brought out about the social issues, but I'm specifically interested in the 
development and economic issues. And perhaps leaving aside the current crazy real estate 
situtation. Specifically, can we sell units for what they cost to build in a place where 
housing prices for other types of housing (even nice housing) are relatively low?  Won't 
the bank look at our housing prices and compare them to "comparable" units in 
the area and find them too high? Won't prospective cohousers do the same? This is even if 
we get cheap land, since construction costs seem still to be high.
I guess I'd be interested in general comments as well about cohousers "moving 
in" to poor neighborhoods where most of the cohousers are not poor themselves. And 
I'm thinking this is a gentrification question as well -- the upsides and the downsides 
of increasing the average value of housing in a poor neighborhood.
Cora
Stony Brook Cohousing
forming and search in and around Jamaica Plain, MA

Results generated by Tiger Technologies Web hosting using MHonArc.