Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Affordable Housing

[Virgil Huston (virgil.huston1955]

These are all good points. I have a concept that would significantly
improve the homeless problem, but in thinking about it, it could also
apply to cohousing. Because it actually is cohousing and is
affordable. It could be as elaborate as you want it to be. Or not.

The holdups are all legal, restrictive laws and community resistance
to anything that might "lower property values and introduce
undesirables into the area." Remember, homelessness does not exist in
affluent neighborhoods. They say it doesn't. Even though it does.

I spent 2 1/2 years in military "cohousing" in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Sometimes it was a tent with others. If I was lucky, it was a plywood
walled room of my own. There were toilet and shower trailers. There
was AC and heat, there was electricity. There were mess tents. There
were recreation tents. Our work spaces were tents or trailers. We got
by. It wasn't even that bad, especially if you had your own room with
80 square feet of privacy. That was bliss. On the upper end were
trailers with a private room and a shared toilet between two rooms.
That is what State Department people have in Iraq now. I never got
that good as a soldier.

Imagine a vacant lot in an blighted urban area with jobs nearby. Tents
or tiny houses. Showers and toilets. Place to eat, place to watch TV
or use a computer. Place to do job training. Place for mental health.
Outdoor recreation like basketball court and tables to sit at and hang
out. Prime power or even a generator. Security and safety.

Step it up a bit and you have affordable cohousing.

Virgil

On Fri, Sep 9, 2016 at 7:04 PM, Kathryn McCamant
<kmccamant [at] cohousing-solutions.com> wrote:
>
> AMEN Philip!
>
> As an example, pre-recession, we had many teachers that could afford to buy 
> into our cohousing projects. Seems much harder for teachers to afford the 
> same homes post-recession.
>
> Katie
> --
> Kathryn McCamant, President
> CoHousing Solutions
> T.530.478.1970  C.916.798.4755
> www.cohousing-solutions.com
>
>
>
>
>
> On 9/9/16, 3:51 PM, "Cohousing-L on behalf of Philip Dowds" 
> <cohousing-l-bounces+kmccamant=cohousing-solutions.com [at] cohousing.org on 
> behalf of rpdowds [at] comcast.net> wrote:
>
>
> We tear our hair out trying to make housing more affordable.  It must be the 
> zoning.  It must be the lenders, or the down payments, or the equity.  It 
> must be the size, so make them smaller.
>
> But I fear the answer is none of the above.  It's not that housing is too 
> expensive, it's that wages are too low.  Wages for the bottom third, or the 
> bottom half, of American households have stagnated for at least a couple of 
> decades, while at the same time, housing costs have appreciated by at least a 
> couple percent a year in the slow markets, and more like six percent in the 
> hot markets.
>
> Our problem is not expensive housing, our problem is income inequality.  If 
> we gave big pay boosts to the two lowest quintiles, and modest pay boosts to 
> the next two -- covering these costs with reduced pay and benefits in the top 
> quintile -- we'd be amazed at how fast the unaffordability problem would 
> evaporate.  But if we can't identify the real problem, then indeed shall we 
> all go bald tearing our hair.
>
> Thanks,
> Philip Dowds
> Cornerstone Cohousing
> Cambridge, MA
>
>> On Sep 9, 2016, at 5:04 PM, Brian Bartholomew via Cohousing-L <cohousing-l 
>> [at] cohousing.org> wrote:
>>
>>
>> Seems to me, tiny houses on wheels are a way to avoid zoning, which
>> bans small houses of a more affordable size.  A downside of tiny
>> houses is they have weight and size restrictions due to road
>> transport, and they can't be built to normal building code strength or
>> durability.  I wouldn't want to be in one during a hurricane.
>>
>> Remove that zoning, and you'll see smaller, more affordable houses
>> reappear.  Then only move the people, not the houses.  Remove other
>> mortgage/real estate red tape, and these smaller houses could be
>> bought and sold as people move, without losing a large chunk of
>> accumulated equity each move in overhead.
>>
>> Brian
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