Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Affordable Cohousing

[Jenny Guy (jenstermeister]

Kingfisher Cohousing in Oakland, California is following New Brighton's
example. We've just purchased a 9 unit apartment complex, with room for a
common house (eventually). It's two buildings, with front doors facing
a central
courtyard. One apartment is vacant and one of our members is moving in
immediately. For the rest, we'll be waiting for vacancies, but we're
happily situated in nearby homes, so we aren't worried about the wait.

It's a very solid property, built in 1940, but with deferred maintenance
and old wiring and plumbing. So we will have work to do, but it's habitable
now and very charming, and has strong bones.

It's much, much cheaper for us than new construction. We have all had to
put in a big down payment, so our model wouldn't work for people who didn't
have that, unless the community had more members at the time of purchase.
This is working for some of us with a chunk of money from an inheritance or
selling a house, but very low income (way below what qualifies you for
affordable housing around here).

Jenny Guy
Kingfisher Cohousing on Brookdale Ave.
Oakland, CA



On Mon, Dec 31, 2012 at 11:03 AM, R.N. Johnson <cohoranda [at] yahoo.com> wrote:

>
> We ended up buying a commercial property with 12 units for well below
> market rate.
> Randa Johnson
> New Brighton Cohousing
> Aptos, CA
>