Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Brooklyn Cohousing

[Raines Cohen (rc3-coho-L]

As Ann reported yesterday, Brooklyn Cohousing is folding its doors
after three years of trying, using both new-build and retrofit models
for creating community.

The story just popped up on the NY Times CityRoom blog, and as usual
there's a profusion of ignorant "it's a commune" / "go back to Russia"
type comments, plus the web page title re-iterating the tired
"communal housing" meme, although the published title at the top is
more reasonable:

Abandoning a Bid to Create an Urban Village
By VIVIAN S. TOY
http://nyti.ms/aB9893

This is our opportunity as a community to set the record straight,
offset the nasty kind of comment with our perspectives on the reality
of the benefits of living in community and the struggles of creating
it. Plus, by recommending/"liking" other comments that reflect our
views, we'll bring more attention to the ones that matter. Please take
a few minutes, log into your NYtimes account if you have one, and join
the conversation.

Below is the comment I posted (not yet approved through the moderation
process on the NYT site, as I write this).

I'd love it if some Brooklyn Cohousers could join us here for the
incredibly valuable "failure analysis" that can help future projects
avoid getting bogged down in the same territory as they go forward in
their journeys.

Raines Cohen, Cohousing Coach & East Bay Cohousing/Cohousing
California community organizer
at Berkeley (CA) Cohousing
currently at the Social Capital Markets (SoCap) conference in San
Francisco, looking for ways cohousing's post-feminist neighborhood
design can appeal to investors "with a gender lens"

My comment:
As a cohousing community organizer who has visited over 100 cohousing
neighborhoods across the U.S., and several meetings and orientations
of Brooklyn Cohousing as it searched for a site and then tried to
develop several, I have to say that I am saddened by this news, but
not surprised.

In a forming group that I was a part of here in the San Francisco Bay
Area as well as ones I’ve advised, a pattern emerges: shifting gears
from a focus on development of new structures they help design
specifically to meet their housing and community needs, to instead try
to work with pre-designed existing buildings, retrofitting a
neighborhood to provide some semblance of community, is not an easy
transition, and many groups don’t survive it. People who band together
to invest in one way in one place with one expectation of a certain
set of benefits, risks, and timelines will balk at radical changes, as
much as they may try to stay together and move forward in community
however they can. At some point, financial necessity may be all that
pushes them onward, as they struggle to find a development structure
that can cover what they lost in earlier attempts.

It is worth noting that nearly all cohousing neighborhoods in the U.S.
that get to the point of site-development approval proceed to occupy
and thrive; none of the market-rate communities that have made it this
far have ceased to function as cohousing.

Not just the market, but social issues may have played a role.
Although the Brooklyn group did evolve over the last three years, my
impression is that it, like many that come together with a single
prominent leader, did not diversify its leadership enough and invest
in the communication tools and training to help it through the
difficulties it faced. When I brought a friend to one meeting this
year, he was put off by the dark, echoey church hall the group met in
and its poor handling of communications around its progress as it
tried to recruit members at a point where it couldn’t publicly
disclose the address it was preparing an offer on.

I encourage the commenters who reflexively balk at the concept to
visit some of the 124 up-and-running cohousing neighborhoods across
the country (or forming ones like Legacy Farm, just an hour or so
upstate) – you’ll find a number of tours offered in several regions,
and many with open houses. There you’ll find a mix of privacy and
community, green building well ahead of standards, coming home to
fresh-cooked meals but enjoying their own full kitchens, people
raising kids together without having to schedule or drive to
playdates, and not just “aging in place” but Aging In Community,
helping each other grow older and maintain their independence through
interdependence.

Get past the “commune” meme that headline-writers can’t resist and
you’ll see that cohousing neighborhoods are just another condo, but
one where the neighbors together participate in running it and helping
each other. Sure, it’s not for everybody, but the dream remains alive
for those of us who see the value of connection.