Re: senior vs. multigen
From: Sharon Villines (sharonsharonvillines.com)
Date: Sun, 26 Feb 2017 09:39:57 -0800 (PST)
> On Feb 25, 2017, at 9:49 AM, Cohousing <cohousing [at] mindspring.com> wrote:
> 
> nor do we know how to market to them.

The years old advice is to build facilities for children — indoor and outdoor 
play spaces. And families will/join later in the process. Most are too busy to 
spend years on meetings that are not directly focused on a move in date. They 
are too lost in schools and seriatim bouts of flu and fever.

> We could share the same common house but not necessarily. 

I would suggest that the greatest source of conflict would be in the CH — meals 
with children running rampant, sometimes happily, sometimes fighting. Parents 
ignoring the behavior because (1) they are used to it and/or (2) they welcome 
the chance to spend time with other adults, not supervising the kids.

One option might be to have a distributed CH. Cornerstone in Cambridge has 
laundry facilities in more than one place — 2 machines in a hallway closet the 
way high rise apartment buildings do. A multipurpose meeting room in a wing of 
living units. Eastern Village has the same distribution — yoga/meditation room 
in one place, guest rooms in another, etc. 

> We also came up with the vision of building one “dual” coho of say 30 
> households and having a “senior wing” on one side of the common house with 15 
> all small one level homes and a “family wing” on the other side with 15 
> larger multilevel homes.

One of the unique opportunities of cohousing is having those who can 
afford/want large units living next to small units for those who can only 
afford or only want small units.

As Katy said, when we moved in we had as many singles living in 3 bedroom units 
as households that included children. People use space very differently, as 
well as planning for the future differently.

> the families becoming empty nesters and moving over to the senior side as 
> seniors left or expired.

Our experience is that people don’t move. The only household that has moved is 
a one that moved from a rental to a two bedroom and after having 2 children, 
moved to a 4 bedroom and rented out the fourth for income.

> So for the time being we have reverted back to concentrating on being a 
> senior coho with no families with young children. No age limit set. There may 
> be couples or individuals in their 30s and 40s who don’t plan to have 
> families that could join us if they choose to. 

One senior community I talked to (forget which) said to build playgrounds 
because grandparents want children to visit. They said they have children 
around all the time visiting from out of state or from down the street.

Perhaps these regulations have changed because I don’t see people talking about 
them. When senior communities started it required local regulations to allow 
them without running afoul of laws against discrimination. They set an age — 
usually no younger than 50 or 55. The limits had to be maintained equally 
across the board.

Sharon
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Sharon Villines
Takoma Village Cohousing, Washington DC
http://www.takomavillage.org





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