Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Affordable / rental cohousing

[Lynn Nadeau / Maraiah (welcome]

As Ann Zabaldo points out, the capital for the creation of rental or subsidized 
housing has to come from somewhere. Jerry McIntire points out that RoseWind in 
Port Townsend WA, has two homes built by Habitat for Humanity. We do. But the 
money for the land was donated. 

As we had made a zero-sum development budget (something I now counsel people 
not to do!) we couldn't afford to not get the income from selling those lots. 
The donation of these two lots to Habitat (which they required) was made 
possible by the gift of tens of thousands of dollars from a member's elderly 
mother. Smaller donations from other members of the community brought the sum 
up to the purchase price of the two lots.

We are a lot-development model, with the cost of building a home funded by each 
respective owner. To have funded the give-away lots from buy in money would 
have added at least $2000 to each member's land purchase. Making some lots or 
units more affordable for some can entail making other lots less affordable for 
others. 

We do have some daylight-basement apartments that are rentals, but those were a 
considerable expense for the home builders, and typically were built so as to 
provide the owners with potential care-giver or relative housing, as moderate 
rental income would never catch up to recouping the construction cost. (I 
figure the cost of my ADU, with its extra kitchen and bathroom, at about 
$40,000 and the rental income is $360 a month including utilities, so 
functionally about $250 a month. ) 

Maraiah Lynn Nadeau
RoseWind Cohousing, Port Townsend
www.rosewind.org

where this weekend saw hundreds of wooden boats paddling, motoring, and sailing 
by downtown  in the sunshine for the annual Wooden Boat Festival: the 
multi-masted schooners were especially majestic to watch, like something from 
another century.

now to put in some time in our food garden, and come home with carrots, beets, 
greens of many sorts, tomatoes, sweet peppers, potatoes,and of course zucchini; 
also some late strawberries and blueberries.