Cohousing-L Mailing List: community location's impact on affordability/diversity

[Kay Argyle (kay.argyle]

> Cohousing communities are usually
> located in very affluent neighborhoods and therefore are exclusively
priced.  
 (from the thread "Green Retirement Communities")

Is this something communities concerned with affordability ought to look at
closely?

Given the sad-but-true correlation between race and income, foregoing an
affluent neighborhood might even help groups interested in minority
recruiting.

The decision to build in Salt Lake's Glendale district had more to do with
the property's availability than with the community's determination to have
a few affordable units, but the lower land costs can't have hurt.  None of
the low-income units come up for sale for another six years (the resident
gets first refusal), but our "nonaffordable" units have been selling for
substantially less than the average for Salt Lake ($284K in 2007), even if
more than the median* for our zip code ($144K).

Glendale has lots of Hispanics, Pacific Islanders, and Bosnian, Sudanese,
and other recent immigrants. White households tend to be elderly.  The
location was seen as a drawback** by many of our group members, but a
minority member has said she was/is very happy the community ended up there.


*A comparison of a median and an average is sometimes apples-and-oranges,
but I couldn't find exactly parallel statistics.
**In large part, simply because it's on the far side of town from the
university, a major employer. It also suffers poor transit service, little
shopping, few parks, a refinery upwind, freight trains, a polluted river,
etc.  But lower property crime rates than the benches!

Kay
Wasatch Commons