Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: rental models of co housing?

[Raines Cohen (rc3-coho-L]

Melanie -

While the economic model that has led to cohousing becoming the
fastest-growing and most durable form of intentional community in the
country has largely been its embrace of homeownership and the finance
system underpinning it, there are indeed some innovations in rental
cohousing.

Golden Gate Cohousing in Oakland, CA, is using a "resident-owned nonprofit"
model, in which the renters together run a nonprofit that owns the
property, similar to a housing coop (a form that is legally and financially
challenging to create in California). While members don't gain any equity,
housing can become more affordable over time as the nonprofit pays off its
mortgage.

There was a North Bay (Sebastopol, CA) community designed to be
affordable-rental cohousing, created with cohousing architects. But it is
challenging to maintain community when people are there not by choice but
by necessity, if they pass on an opening they might get dropped to the
bottom of the list for affordable housing of any sort. And having a
resident manager whose job it is to protect the investors' interests can
make it harder to feel true autonomy in use of the Common House and other
shared spaces.

Some other innovative rental examples include Common Fire cohousing
(Tivoli, NY) and some communities based on Community Land Trusts.

Fundamentally, the challenge is that building housing takes money. And it
takes a lot of careful thought and commitment to get that structured in a
way that doesn't exacerbate economic differences, and gives people both a
voice and a stake in the process.

There are certainly lots of rentals from individual homeowners in other
cohousing neighborhoods. One here in East Bay Cohousing has an owner
looking for students to share a home. A neighbor in my home community
inherited a unit from her mom, a founder, and her renting it out for a
while has brought us wonderful age diversity, and more variety in a place
where turnover is otherwise quite low, with up to a dozen years between
resales. We have a long tradition of people starting out by renting, and
then buying when a unit becomes available... my wife and I were the first
ones to buy in without already renting here, six years after the initial
condo conversion (which itself was three years after the community first
bought the site and started living in it by renting to ourselves).

Like Philip, I am concerned about the emergence of #coliving (the hip young
hashtag for what our former E.D. Oz calls "cohouseholding", sharing under
one roof) as an "industry," with private for-profit operators,
venture-capital investment, and the like. How much of a role do tenants get
in choosing their neighbors? Will they be able to build deep relationships
out of a form built to support nomadic millenials? Do they ever get the
autonomy we can experience with a site manager looking over their shoulder?
Will this ever serve people throughout life, or is it just a kind of
post-college dorm?

Raines Cohen, Cohousing Coach & Cohousing California community organizer
Living in community in Berkeley, California.
Organizer, 2019 National Cohousing Open House Day -- is your community on
the list yet? http://cohousing.org/openhouse2019/communities


On Sun, Mar 31, 2019 at 8:39 AM Melanie G <gomelaniego [at] gmail.com> wrote:

> Do any exist?  Or would that be out of sink with the logic?  Or maybe even
> rent to own?  Just wondering after reading some of the abundant comments
> about zoning, whether something like a rent to own situation might be
> viable within a co housing framework.
>
> thank you all for the richness of conversations here,
> melanie (looking for community)
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