Cohousing-L Mailing List: RE: washrooms - 2 required in commonhouse?

[Casey Morrigan (cjmorr]

Leslie:  we are in California, which may or may not help your case :).  We
have one washroom in our CH which is accessible to wheelchair folks and has
a sign posted that it is for both men and women.  We don't need another one.
Our CH is around 2000 sq. feet and is limited to (I think) 45 people for sit
down dinners, just so you have a sense of the size of it..

Our kids' room is so small!  My gosh, if we had known how important it would
be to have a larger room for them to safely and comfortably play, mostly
after dinner.  I don't know how big your kid's room is, but it really
matters to have a good size kids' room, so protecting the size of that may
be important.  It's also important for us to have line of sight into the
kids room from the dining room, (in case you were designing,) so parents can
both eat and keep an eye out.

Casey Morrigan
Two Acre Wood
Sebastopol CA

-----Original Message-----
From: cohousing-l-admin [at] cohousing.org
[mailto:cohousing-l-admin [at] cohousing.org]On Behalf Of Chris ScottHanson
Sent: Monday, October 28, 2002 8:53 AM
To: Cohousing-l
Subject: Re: [C-L]_washrooms - 2 required in commonhouse?


on 10/28/02 8:33 AM, Leslie Myers wrote:

> Hello from Canada,
>
> This is quite a bit lighter as a topic than guns or burnt-out committee
> members, but our development permit is requiring that we have male and
> female washrooms in our common house, meaning we must have two accessible
> washrooms rather than the one we planned and think adequate.  This will
> cut into the space in a children's room that doesn't seem very large
> already.  Our project is in the early stages of being built and we are
> appealing this decision.  Just thought it might help to find out if this
> has come up in other projects.  If we can say, "no other cohousing common
> houses have gendered washrooms", it may strengthen our appeal.
>
> Thanks.
>
> Leslie Myers

Leslie,

Unfortunately, this is common.  Makes no sense to most cohousers, but it
does to government officials trying to protect the public from bad things,
like sharing a washroom.

At Winslow Cohousing the second washroom was converted into a communications
room, with wall to wall to wall to wall bulletin boards, etc.  All fixtures
were removed.  You might plan to remove fixtures and make the room a place
for storage, or perhaps a nice little office.

Guest rooms often sell better during the permit process as storage rooms,
too.

Chris ScottHanson

Cohousing Resources, LLC
Ecovillages, Cohousing & Sustainable Communities
Development and Consulting for a Sustainable Future
   based on the Natural Power of Community

email:          Chris [at] CohousingResources.com
web site:      http://www.CohousingResources.com

9813 NE Murden Cove Dr.
Bainbridge Island, WA  98110

(206)842-9160
(206)842-9203 FAX
(206)369-7755 Cell

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