Cohousing-L Mailing List: Affordable housing with Habitat for Humanity

[karen jacobsen (karenldrn]

I am looking for anyone who has experience working on affordable housing
with Habitat and CoHousing. Our community is starting a relationship with
Habitat to build 2 affordable units on our 13 unit project. Initially
Habitat gave us a letter of intent to build one of our duplexes. Now the
members of the board have changed. They are not as enthusiastic about taking
our gifted land and infrastructure. One of the issues is the selection
process. Some board members feel the populations they serve are unable to
function in a community that requires the amount of participation and
communication which happens in CoHousing. In a community which is small like
ours participation is very important, not only for work distribution but for
a sense of community. 
I have a few specific questions: What was the selection process in finding
owners of current habitat homes in your CoHousing community? Did your
community help market and select the Habitat members? If so how? Is this
board of director's presumption true; that their population is not
interested in community? Did habitat in other areas require their applicants
to currently live in substandard housing to apply?
Any insight would be greatly appreciated. Also if you have your written
agreement with Habitat I would love to read it. This might not be of
interest for the whole list serve. If this is the case, you can e-mail me
directly at karenldrn [at] earthlink.com Thank you for your time in responding.