Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Diversity

[David Heimann (heimann]

Hello Liza and everyone,

	Your post reminds me that this thread started out by someone 
asking for information on the diversity of cohousing communities, 
especially the ones they live in or know much about.  I'd like to mention 
that my community, Jamaica Plain Cohousing, has a great degree of 
diversity.  At one point we did an informal inventory of our households. 
Between Latino, black, Asian, GLBT, and physical disability, 13 of our 30 
households are "nonstandard" to some degree.  If you add Jewish, which is 
"nonstandard" but often left out of a diversity count, our diversity 
extends to well over half our households.

	We did have a couple of kerfuffles on the issue that came up 
during development (that got expressed during some of our retreats), but 
so far none have arisen since move-in (hopefully I'm not jinxing anything 
:-)).  Diversity is a major part of our vision statement, and that may 
have helped in our self-selection process.

Regards,
David Heimann
JP Cohousing