Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Affordable CoHousing

[Joaniblank (Joaniblank]

In answer to someone's info request, there is a cohousing group that is
working with Habitat for Humanity. It is in Pacifica, CA (On the coast about
8 miles south of San Francisco) I believe that Habitat is buying the site and
will fund the construction as well. There are some very interesting questions
being raised by this collaboration (?) The Habitat people don't quite "get
it" about cohousing, and the original cohousing core-group, doesn't quite
know how to relate to the basic principles behind Habitat and the way they
have always developed housing. Put less judgementally, the culture of
cohousing is quite different from the culture of Habitat. 

It is interesting to me that in this thread on affordability, no one has yet
brought up the following. I think we sometimes assume that the only thing
keeing a given low-income household  from living in cohousing is that they
could not afford it. If that were so, all we would have to do is find ways to
make living in cohousing a lot less expensive--which has been discussed a lot
here, and voila, the world would be a better place and we would have nice
diverse communities. This ignores the fact that the American Dream, most
especially for those who have grown up with very limited means,
includes--often right at the top of the list--a house of one's own,
preferably owned, but in any event, a single family  dwelling. The qualities
that most of desire in our living situation will be quite foreign and of
little interest to a household with this value foremost in their minds. On
the other hand, those of us who grew up with the confidence that without
undue struggle we would have that house of our own, have the luxury or
seeking something more in the way of community. 

I attended one meeting of the Habitat/Cohousing group that was specifically
held to recruit low income families. The low-income folks who attended were
drawn there by the prospect of low-cost home ownership, and thought
everything else about the project was wierd. They asked questions like
"what's the point in having common meals?" I must say that this discussion
brought to mind for me two different housemates that my ex and I had when we
were living in the suburbs in a single family house. We had housemates
because we liked living with others, but these two women lived in shared
house because they had no other choice. They couldn't afford to live on their
own. One of them was so ashamed of living with us that she wouldn't let her
boyfriend or her father visit her or even pick her up at our house.