Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Frustration in Forming Community

[Sharon Villines (sharon]

On May 26, 2004, at 1:35 PM, Rob Sandelin wrote:

> There is sometimes TOO much planning, etc involved in getting started. 
> Might be easier to find a big house to rent, then invite people to 
> cohabitat with as a starting place. In this way you will have direct 
> experience with community life to work from, and also will filter in 
> and filter out people who you align with.  The whole, lets all expend 
> huge risk, buy land and build houses approach, only works for a very 
> small number of people.

I missed the first post so I may be responding to the wrong issue but 
for most people interested in cohousing, this would not be a good test. 
Many if not most people who would be very happy living in cohousing 
would be miserable in a big house full of people. Cohousers are 
generally interested in private living within a larger community. They 
want to share lives but not bathrooms. I adore  living alone but  
living alone with a lot of other people is ideal for me.

It is certainly a drawback that cohousing requires real estate 
development. Some intermediate steps might be helpful -- moving closer 
to households who are interested in more sharing and/or working more 
closely with present neighbors to form neighbornets. While the 
commonhouse is important it doesn't have magical qualities and brings 
lots of work and expense along with it. Just setting up a communication 
system amongst a group of people and beginning to share errands, 
holidays, childcare, etc. can build many of the advantages of a 
cohousing community.

Sharon
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Sharon Villines
Takoma Village Cohousing, Washington DC
http://www.takomavillage.org