Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Examiner article/Fairfax "cohousing

[Stuart Staniford-Chen (stanifor]

Marty wrote:
>
> Second, I thought part of the definition of cohousing was that it was
> designed and built by the residents and owned by them.

In the first edition of the book, there was at least one example of a  
community in which most of the homes were rented from a non-profit.   
There was also an example in which existing homes were rehabbed and  
common elements added.

My community, N St, chooses to call itself cohousing.  Was it "designed  
and built" by the residents?  Well we certainly didn't design and build  
the houses.  We did *initiate* and *control* the transformation of our  
neighbourhood to a community.  We have designed some of our landscaped  
elements in common.  We retrofitted one of the houses to be a common  
house.  There we eat community dinner several times a week and decide our  
common business by consensus before retreating to the privacy or our own  
homes (and kitchens).

Are you going to say we aren't cohousing because we didn't design and  
build all the houses ourselves?  Because some of our houses are rentals?   


Stuart Staniford-Chen, N St Cohousing and Cohousing Network Webweaver.

(For more information about N St, see our web pages at  
http://www.cohousing.org/specific/n_street/)