Re: Regarding Affordability in Cohousing
From: Gayle Alston (galston1954gmail.com)
Date: Mon, 22 Aug 2016 06:49:02 -0700 (PDT)
This idea around affordability is very near to my heart.  I have hopes of
converting a 1960's cement block motel into a solo senior cohousing
property in a small (pop 150) town in rural south Georgia.  My thinking is
that each person will have a room that is rehabbed with a murphy bed,
living area, frig/micro/toaster.  Common area will include a home theater
and cafe and 35 acres of wooded area with a fairly extensive raised bed
gardening operation.  I am also considering opening up the front section of
my nearby (100 yds) home for common area so people can use the kitchen,
dining room, and den.

I would like to make it available to seniors like me... who are happily
solo but may not have planned so well for retirement so have limited
monthly incomes.  I would like to intentionally recruit members who will
bring different skills for the ongoing development of the property for the
good of all.

Am I completely off base here?

On Sat, Aug 20, 2016 at 1:14 PM, Angela Steiert <angie.steiert [at] gmail.com>
wrote:

>
> I think it is safe to say that unless a community has subsidized a unit or
> gotten section 8 housing approval, that most co-housing communities prices
> put their members in a higher income bracket.  $230,000 & $250,000 is a lot
> of money.  Someone would have to make at least $75,000 a year to pay that
> mortgage and less than 15% of American's make that much money.  Therefore
> only the top 15% of American's  are able to participate in a cohousing
> community at those prices, which makes it a somewhat elitist entity.  I
> live in a cohousing community and I did not pay that much money, but I was
> quite shocked to see the majority of prices for communities when I was
> hoping to join one. I am a teacher, and I find it quite sad to think that
> most teacher's, unless they have two incomes in their homes, could not live
> in a cohousing community.  There is really no easy answer to this, as I
> have come to realize that most cohousing communities are private entities,
> and that cohousing is in limited quantity in the US which makes it more
> valuable. I do think we have to acknowledge the reality of cohousing in
> America.  So, there are places out there with more reasonable prices, but
> even those are probably too high for many Americans at the wages they
> currently make.
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