Re: Diversity Problem
From: Crystal Farmer (crystalbyrdfarmergmail.com)
Date: Sun, 5 Aug 2018 05:58:24 -0700 (PDT)
Quote: "Rocky Corner has attracted all of its members based on their
interest in cohousing and not based on prior acquaintance. Nonetheless, we
are mostly white, mostly Democrats, and mostly well educated. That is the
market for cohousing, like it or not."

This topic comes up every so often, and here's my two cents. The market for
cohousing is everyone. The Cohousing Research Network showed that *everyone* is
interested in cohousing across race, socioeconomic, political and gender
lines (link to journal article
<https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10511482.2018.1424724?journalCode=rhpd20>).
So why are only a certain set investing in it?

As far as race, only about 40% of black households own their home, vs 71%
of white households. The norms around home ownership are different, not to
mention historical housing segregation that occurs in every large city.
(Read The Color of Law for the data.) If a majority white forming group is
picking a place to build, that place is more likely to be white and upper
middle class (due to stereotypes about crime and bad schools in racially
mixed/majority black neighborhoods.)

A suggestion was for POC (people of color) to create their own communities.
The Twin Oaks Communities Conference discussed this idea last year, and
this year they will have a POC panel. The POC Sustainable Housing Network
on the west coast is trying to do exactly that. Their challenges are the
same as any community, but consider the fact that the household wealth of
black families is 10 times less than white families. They simply don't have
the access that majority white groups have.

I don't think this is a problem for people of color to solve. If we had the
money and representation in government, we would have solved it.

Crystal Farmer

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