Cohousing-L Mailing List: The continuum of co-housing

[Diane Bassett (diane]

Hi everyone,

This is my first post, let me quickly introduce myself-- my name is Diane
and I lived in a large communal house with 60 people in college.  I loved
it.  Now, in my 40's, I find myself in a situation where my husband and I
are buying my parents' home from them (as they move into a retirement
community with increasing levels of medical care).  The motive to buy their
house was to be closer to them in this phase of their life, and I've lived
there and love the house. It's in a really beautiful area of southern
Calif., just north of San Pedro, about a block from the ocean.

It's MUCH bigger than my husband and I need.  So we have 2 bedrooms and a
bath upstairs (with an ocean view!) we could share.  We're moving there in
May and are seriously considering ways we could share the home, trading rent
and utilities for a fairly extensive list of chores around the house.  This
is interesting in light of the recent discussion on "affordability".

In our situation, the reality is that we'll both be working long hours each
day at jobs to pay for the (very) large mortgage on the house.  We dread the
poor quality of life you get when you both schlep home after a long day and
no one has had time to meal plan, shop, cook, run the dogs, clean the house,
etc.  So we realized that this kind of house-mate situation might work
really well for a couple where one of them is off working at a job, and the
other desires a different lifestyle or has an occupation with flexible
work-from-home hours (ie, a writer, an artist, etc).  That second person
would basically cover the rent by performing a specific set of duties (the
basic domestic-management stuff, which we do NOT take for granted!).

So in watching some of the recent discussion I realize that there is an
interesting continuum of co-housing, and that there is a lot of opportunity
to creatively look at the assets/resources and hand and the needs of the
group or household and come up with something that works.  We're about to
try it and are starting to put out feelers for our house-mates (and are
trying to learn how to best do that).

If anyone's had experience in this area and has any advice or tips to share,
I'd love to hear it.  Many thanks, I'm enjoying this group a lot.

Diane