Re: House mate
From: Raines Cohen (rc3-coho-Lraines.com)
Date: Fri, 1 Jun 2012 10:05:16 -0700 (PDT)
Marival -

You're in luck. While most US cohousing is owner-occupied homeowner, there
are definitely opportunities to rent homes and rooms in homes in California
cohousing neighborhoods.

There are some cohousing communities here that are 100% rental, including:

* Petaluma Avenue Homes, an all-affordable-rental community in Sebastopol.
Note that you have to have a low-enough income to qualify, and there is a
long waiting list. Affordable Housing Associates of Berkeley built and runs
it.

* Golden Gate Cohousing, a small retrofit community in Oakland near
Emeryville and Berkeley, is an-all rental community we helped create. Six
units in the first house have been occupied for the past year, and a second
house nextdoor is being renovated to create more spaces, with other
connections in the greater neighborhood. It's a small community with no
vacancies currently, but being all-rental (and eventually owned by a
resident-run nonprofit) helps make it accessible to people at different
times of life and with different career paths -- the current residents
include several activists and artists.

* Los Angeles EcoVillage uses a cohousing model and is transforming from a
nonprofit-owned rental apartment (and other adjacent properties) to a
member-owned co-op on a land trust.

The San Francisco Bay Area (especially the East Bay and some of the North
Bay) features a number of co-ops, some connected with Community Land Trusts
(CLTs).

While technically you own a home in one of these communities, the land
price being separated out, and sometimes outside subsidies, make the prices
much closer to renting, with share prices as low as a few thousand dollars,
rather than the hundreds of thousands it costs to buy a market-rate home
around here.

Not all of these co-ops are actually cooperative, and many don't have the
shared amenities, meals, common house, or group spirit that exemplify the
best cohousing neighborhoods, but they are part of the larger communities
movement.

We link to several of these on the East Bay Cohousing website:
http://www.ebcoho.org/

Are you in the area already? One of the best ways to get connected is to
visit communities, and there's going to be tours and open houses in just
two weeks around the National Cohousing Conference in Oakland. There's a
Pleasant Hill cohousing open house this Sunday (see the EBCOHO site above
to RSVP) -- as one of the larger communities in the area, it is more likely
to have a rental sooner.

Speaking of the conference, we've still got a few discount tickets
available, and opportunities to participate on individual days for less
than a full ticket. Join us! It'll be well worth the trip, and could lead
to your connection to community.

Raines Cohen
Cohousing Coach & Cohousing California regional organizer
http://www.CalCoho.org/
510-842-6224

On Thu, May 31, 2012 at 3:46 AM, Marival Barragan Bayles <
marival58 [at] gmail.com> wrote:

>
> I can't afford to buy a house but I want to live in a cohousing community
> in California. Can anybody help?
>
> MariVal

  • House mate Marival Barragan Bayles, May 31 2012
    • Re: House mate Catya Belfer, June 1 2012
    • Re: House mate Raines Cohen, June 1 2012

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