Re: question about cohousing communities that have not made it
From: Elizabeth Magill (pastorlizmgmail.com)
Date: Mon, 26 Jul 2021 16:30:20 -0700 (PDT)
Our community was close enough to collapse that a few of us were trying to
figure out how to get people to have the conversations. We simply couldn't
find land--and spent money investigating several properties. So it was
taking more and more money in that we had already *spent*.

And then we found land.

Lots more went wrong after that, including the zoning board delaying our
project for about a year, basically moving construction into the collapse
of the real estate market. Really, just about anything that could go wrong
did go wrong.

And, with about a third of the homes sold, we proceeded. And now have a
lovely community.

Also, I'm not sure exactly what it would mean to "fail" after move-in. It
took us three more years to sell all the homes, and it cost us an extra
large hunk of money. But there we were, and here we are, cohousing.

I'm assuming a "fail" would be to find that we were just an HOA, not
actually a community.
-Liz
(The Rev. Dr.) Elizabeth Mae Magill
Pastor, Ashburnham Community Church
Minister to the Affiliates, Ecclesia Ministries
www.elizabethmaemagill.com
508-450-0431


On Mon, Jul 26, 2021 at 6:36 PM Muriel Kranowski <murielk [at] vt.edu> wrote:

> Whenever I am read about the odds against a new coho effort succeeding, I
> am again so very grateful that not only did a few burning souls start
> working on such a project right in my town, but that our project succeeded.
> (I was a modest ember type of soul compared to the initial group.)
>   Muriel at Shadowlake Village
>
> On Mon, Jul 26, 2021 at 6:16 PM Fred H Olson <fholson [at] cohousing.org>
> wrote:
>
> > Jim Bronson >jimbronsonashland [at] gmail.com> asked:
> >
> > >One of our explorer couples is interested to know about cohousing
> > >communities that have failed, both 1)  after they were built and
> occupied,
> > >and 2) when they were in a stage of formation.
> >
> > I am not aware of of any communities that got built and occupied and
> > then failed.  But most cohousing development efforts are not successful.
> >
> > Of the 461 communities listed in cohousing directory from 1994 - 2017,
> > 317 failed to get built (69%) and 144 succeeded (31%).
> >
> > From correspondence a while back, a cohousing developer in Madison, WI
> > came up with similar numbers.
> >
> > See my page at http://l.cohousing.org/1994-2017.htm
> > about how I came to this conclusion.
> >
> > It would be nice to know how many failed after getting to various stages
> > of development but I am unaware of any such information.  Some of
> > those in my study may not have gotten beyond the idea stage with a
> > directory listing...
> >
> > Fred
> >
> > --
> > Fred H. Olson  Minneapolis,MN 55411  USA        (near north Mpls)
> >      Email:        fholson at cohousing.org      612-588-9532
> > My Link Pg: http://fholson.cohousing.org
> > _________________________________________________________________
> > Cohousing-L mailing list -- Unsubscribe, archives and other info at:
> > http://L.cohousing.org/info
> >
> >
> >
> >
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