Cohousing-L Mailing List: RE: Unit size vs. family size (was Encouraging Multigenerational Community)

[Rob Sandelin (floriferous]

Hi Eris, I am looking forward to a beer in your commonhouse someday! (You
promised) Could it be that the folks who bought larger units did so because
that is what there was and what they wanted was not available? Did they have
a real choice? Granted, I am not advocating either way, but I have seen a
pattern in many groups that one bedrooms, when available, tended to go to
singles or couples and not folks with kids. My friend in Bellevue has a very
spacious, 1300 sq foot condo, which has one bedroom. You could convert the
office room into another  bedroom but it has no built in closet, hence it is
a one bedroom unit. So, if you really wanted to, you could build one bedroom
units quite large. Empty nesters usually want a GUEST room, for the kids
when they come for visits. And many married  couples I know without kids
have his and hers office spaces. Hence, a space designed as one bedroom, two
offices, might be an interesting way to attract childless couples, if that
was the goal. My experience is that few couples I know remain childless,
thus a one bedroom would not meet their needs and if other options were not
available, they would probably move out. But I still think  if your goal is
to LIMIT couples with children, then one bedroom units will do this for you.
There is no guarantee that the two-four bedrooms won't get bought by
childless couples or singles, but I took the intent of the poster was to
try to architect a certain mixture of couples, families and singles.  I
wonder what a cohousing group of all one bedroom units would be like?

Rob Sandelin
Sky Valley Environments  <http://www.nonprofitpages.com/nica/SVE.htm>
Field skills training for student naturalists
Floriferous [at] msn.com


-----Original Message-----
From: cohousing-l-admin [at] cohousing.org
[mailto:cohousing-l-admin [at] cohousing.org]On Behalf Of erisw
Sent: Tuesday, January 28, 2003 4:44 PM
To: cohousing-l [at] cohousing.org
Subject: [C-L]_Unit size vs. family size (was Encouraging
Multigenerational Community)



Rob said:

> The way you set this up is by the number of bedrooms in your development.
> Small, one bedroom units are not attractive to couples with kids. Two and
> three+ bedroom units are desirable for families with kids. So, in a thirty
> home development you would want to have say 18 or so one bedroom units to
> set up the ratios you state that you want.

True, one bedroom units are not attractive to couples with kids, but they
are often not attractive to couples without kids or  even to singles!  We
ended up not building ANY one bedroom units.  It seems that in contemporary
America we all feel that we need/want lots of rooms in our houses.  In our
cohousing community and in our greater community, there seems to be little
relationship between unit size and family size. I know single people and
childless couples with two or three or even four bedrooms and larger
families with one or two.

eris
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