Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Development Financial Structure

[Meg Palley (megp]

thanks for your financial comments.  How can we change this to include lower
middle income  even if not the poor?

Elizabeth Stevenson wrote:

> I think the demand for money right away discourages community building. We
> are an extreme example, but some of our members didn't know if they would
> have the money to buy until months before move in. And this, after being in
> the group for almost five years!
>
> It could lead very easily to the group falling apart, IMO, since it would
> scare away lots of potential members and you might not be able to get all
> the financing you need anyway. Why should strangers have to pony up cash for
> something that may never come to fruition? Giving people money requires
> trust, and you need to build community to have trust.
>
> This getting money up front trend is disturbing to me. The very people
> responsible for bringing cohousing to the rest of the world, Chuck and
> Katie, are involved in a new group that requires people to pay up after only
> THREE MEETINGS. This is insane. Let's assume they accomplish their goal of
> getting this built quickly with this strategy. What will they have? Very
> nice houses in a "good" neighborhood. That is all. And homogeneous? You bet.
>
> I'm not saying it takes five years to build a community, or that it should.
> But if your only focus is on getting money, you can't build community.
> Getting it built fast is not the be-all and end-all of cohousing.
> --
> Liz Stevenson
> Southside Park Cohousing
> Sacramento, California
> tamgoddess [at] attbi.com
> > From: Sharon Villines <sharon [at] sharonvillines.com>
> > Reply-To: cohousing-l [at] cohousing.org
> > Date: Sun, 17 Nov 2002 22:40:13 -0500
> > To: "cohousing-l [at] cohousing.org" <cohousing-l [at] cohousing.org>
> > Subject: Re: [C-L]_Development Financial Structure
> >
> > On 11/17/02 11:26 AM, "Diana Porter" <porterd [at] cinci.rr.com> wrote:
> >
> >> Does this upfront money discourage  too many people from considering
> >> co-housing?
> >
> > Yes, because very few people have the spare cash to float in limbo for the
> > length of time it takes to get a project off the ground.
> >
> > When you begin depending on people to be "real" in terms of being able to
> > support the project, you need to know if they can be mortgage approved. They
> > may already own a home and will not want to sell their home until they are
> > ready to move into their new home. They may have adequate income but not
> > enough money to loan the project money for an indeterminate period of time.
> >
> > Sharon
> > --
> > Sharon Villines
> > Takoma Village Cohousing, Washington DC
> > http://www.takomavillage.org
> >
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