Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Affordability?

[David Heimann (heimann]

Hello April and discussants,

	We managed at Jamaica Plain Cohousing to establish an affordable 
community (that's relatively speaking of course, we're in Boston!), in the 
sense that a large fraction of our households have median or lower 
household incomes.  What we did is very similar to what Robert Heinrich 
mentions:  very few unit plans, limited options, no customization, a 
building liaison to the contractor (and a household liaison to that 
liaison!), pooling our questions and discussions, etc.  Considering a 
number of major unexpected expenses that hit us, it's probably the only 
reason we got our units built at a cost reasonably comparable to the 
average in Boston.  What we also did was to create an affordability fund 
with money put forward by a number of households in the community to help 
some of the other households to make it in.

	Most likely affordability will require both -- very standardized 
planning to keep the costs down and an affordability fund to help 
households over the hump.  However, I imagine Albany is an easier place to 
make something affordable than is Boston.  All the best!

Regards,
David Heimann
JP Cohousing



Date: Thu, 15 Mar 2007 19:38:54 -0400
From: "Robert Heinich" <robert [at] enocommons.org>
Subject: Re: [C-L]_ Affordability?
To: "Cohousing-L" <cohousing-l [at] cohousing.org>
Message-ID: <007301c7675b$19612430$6609a8c0@IBMA3A7311B559>
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April,

Cohousing can made more affordable but building houses is still expensive.

Eno Commons started off as the affordable cohousing community in the 
Triangle area in North Carolina.

Some of the cost-limiting practices were:
* We had only 2 house plans for 22 houses.  No custom houses
  and we tried to limit options.
  (To quote Jessie Handforth Kome , now of Eastern Village, said,
  "Change Orders are Death!")
  * Almost every house had eggshell interior
  * we had a palette of outside colors
* We went with a production builder so multiple houses could be worked
  on at the same time.
* We had a builder liaison to limit the # of folks contacting the builder
  and we pooled our questions.

we built above average home for an average price.  Unfortunately, this did 
not mean that everyone that started us with stayed with us.  There was a 
housing boom 1998-1999 so building supplies cost went up and some could 
afford the increase cost.  Despite this, we were still less expensive than 
the other cohousing communities in our area.

I have been told that building houses is juggling schedule, quality and 
cost but you can only control two of the factors.

You will need to decide on whether to live closer to Albany (more 
expensive land but you have access to services and perhaps a reduced 
dependency on cars or live further out (less expansive land but you may 
not have water/sewer/garbage/cable/mass transportation...).  Arguments can 
be made for either option.

-Robert Heinich
 Eno Commons Cohousing
 Durham, NC
 where we live in the city but have a rural feel.