Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: cooperatives and cohousing

[Raines Cohen (rc3-coho-L]

Good morning, Liz.
The condo model has been the default
get-it-financed-using-conventional-mortgages-leveraging-the-banking-system
mechanism that drives communities to use condominium or Planned Unit
Development (PUD) structures for lot-model communities for so long that the
number of established cohousing neighborhoods that are legally cooperatives
is pretty small.

Coop-based cohousing neighborhoods I know of include:

- Winslow Cohousing (Bainbridge Island, WA)

- Monterey Cohousing (Minneapolis, MN)

- EcoVillage Cohousing Cooperative (Ithaca, NY) [the first neighborhood at
Ithaca EcoVillage; my understanding is that the second neighborhood used a
different legal model]

Some smaller/retrofit projects use Tenants In Common (TIC) ownership,
sometimes as a transitional step to condo-izing down the road, or because
the property can't legally be condo-ized, including:

- Temescal Creek Cohousing (Oakland, CA)

- New Brighton Cohousing (Aptos, CA)

You can think of TIC as kind of an "unincorporated coop," in the same way
that a not-for-profit may function as an unincorporated association without
doing all the filings and formality of becoming a nonprofit corporation,
501(c)3 et al.

- Legacy Farm (Rosendale, CA) is also pursuing a cooperative model; New York
law seems to favor cooperative ownership vs. condos, and has an extensive
process of filings and public disclosure requirements to protect buyers
(from us, the evil developers, who also happen to be the future buyers, so
it gets a little strange sometimes, to the point where, in theory, we aren't
allowed to tell ourselves about our own projects).

- Mariposa Grove (Oakland, CA) calls itself a housing cooperative (perhaps
based on its original intended structure), but legally ended up constituted
as limited-equity condos so that members could take advantage of first-time
homebuyer incentives offered by city and state programs. Note that it
incorporates a land trust (in this case, Northern California Land Trust)
owning the underlying property and providing a 99-year ground lease to the
community, to create permanent affordability.

- Songaia Cohousing (Bothell, WA) started as a coop but went with the condo
model in order to get built.

- Zephyr Valley Community Co-op (Rushford, MN) seems to be using a coop
model

- Port Townsend EcoVillage (next door to Rosewind Cohousing in Pt. Townsend,
WA)

I know of at least one cooperative shared household set up within a
condo-based cohousing community:

- Sunward Cohousing (Ann Arbor, MI)

In addition to the financing issues (which can have a very real effect on
both resale prices and ease of selling/time to sell), in theory you could be
exposed to greater liability as a coop member than as a condo, but again, it
does vary by state.

Some of the advantages of the coop legal form include:

- Greater member participation in future resident selection - it is up to
the community, not just the departing member
- Easy transfer between members (unit-to-unit moves) without real estate
transactions and fees necessary
- In some states, easier filings (note that in California, coops have to do
similar Department of Real Estate filings to condos, with subdivision maps
and thick reams of paperwork)
- Potentially easier financing/approval for creatively different folks with,
for example, assets but no credit.

Note that financing options have changed over the decades; initially some
groups looked at National Coop Bank as a mortgage financier and chose the
form specifically for that reason but it has changed its guidelines as to
project type and size and funds availability, and some were stranded when
they were ready to take action.

Winslow has some relevant discussion:
http://www.winslowcohousing.org/finance.html

As you do internet searches, be sure to factor out the overlapping but
different terminology/legal models used in other countries. And keep in mind
the larger # of groups in formation that say they're going to be a coop but
may never be able to get built/financed in that form.

Raines Cohen, Cohousing Coach http://www.CohousingCoach.com/

at Berkeley (CA) Cohousing, which spent a long while exploring the
coop-vs-condo question 15 years ago, and ended up as a limited-equity
(permanently affordable, prices tied to area income) condo.

Community Organizer, East Bay Cohousing http://www.ebcoho.org/

delighted to welcome folks at a highly-rated cocktail hour before Saturday's
Coho/US bus tour and glad that our connections led to a NYT reporter and
photographer on board

Co-Author, Audacious Aging

coming soon to support your Aging-In-Community initiatives, for senior and
intergenerational cohousing and village-model neighborhood organizing

-
On Tue, Mar 24, 2009 at 7:22 AM, Liz Ryan Cole <lizryancole [at] mac.com> wrote:

>
> Can anyone on this list point me to cohousing projects that are
> partially or totally "cooperative"?  I know that every state has a
> different definition of cooperative, which does present an
> interesting challenge so answer even if you are not sure of the
> organization is "cooperative".
>