Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: New York Times article on the Rocky Corner foreclosure

[R Philip Dowds (rphilipdowds]

Speaking as retired architect who spent decades working in and for the real 
estate development industry — by definition, almost all my clients, even the 
NFPs, were real estate developers — I’ll pitch in my own two cents.

First of all, blaming the public bureaucracy is misguided.  Like most of us, 
most public officials are doing the best they can, within a context of 
limitations over which they have, at best, modest influence.  But I must admit 
that in my nearly five decades of professional practice, it has indeed gotten a 
lot harder to get a building out of the ground.  Let’s look at some of the 
context:

ZONING:  Yes, it’s true, there’s a lot NIMBY out there:  Existing residents 
sitting in their single family bungalows, strenuously opposed to anything that 
doesn’t look like them and their bungalows.  But it’s not always true 
everywhere, all the time.  Many cities and towns are willing and able to 
experiment with novel zoning — inclusionary zoning, mixed use and planned unit 
development districts, and so on — and a skilled program of political 
persuasion can make cohousing headway in these communities.  Do the work, and 
sometimes or often, get the result.
     And times are changing.  When I started out in my own cohousing trip 15 
years ago, my Mac spellchecker always changed “cohousing” to “choosing”.  Now 
it accepts cohousing as a word.

BUILDING AND LIFE SAFETY CODES:  Like tax law, these have gotten wildly more 
complicated during my decades of practice.  Sprinklers, structural peer review, 
egress and fire separation enhancements, mandatory contractor guarantees, you 
name it.  State building codes have gone from 100 or 200 pages, to literally 
thousands of pages.  Don’t like the building codes?  Then you get the 
Bellevue-Stratford Hotel (legionnaire’s disease), the Kansas City Hyatt Regency 
(tea dance collapse), and Champlain Towers South. 

ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION:  Since the mid-twentieth century, we’ve accumulated a 
wide range of environmental protection laws which require the collaboration and 
investment of both public and private actors, and generally make property 
development (and operation) more arduous and expensive.  Some of these 
regulations are about containing or cleaning up past damage; others are about 
preventing future damage.  Don’t like so much environmental red tape?  Then you 
get Love Canal, Flint, and *A Civil Action*.
      Climate change is not actually a pollution problem like toxic 
contamination, but nonetheless states and localities are adopting rules about 
building energy usage, conservation and efficiency — all of which are driving 
up review, design and construction costs.  I doubt that many of us want to make 
the case that that these costs are “extra” and “unnecessary”.

FINANCIAL OVERSIGHT:.  Real estate development is a legitimate and challenging 
profession … but it’s also the domain of scam artists — witness the career of a 
former President.  Rules and regs governing the finance of property development 
come and go, but there’s no denying they can add time and cost to a development 
project.  Don’t like this public meddling in the private world of finance?  
Then get acclimated to events like the collapse of the savings and loan 
industry in the 1980s, or the home mortgage industry implosion of 2007-2010.  
And while “cohousing” is in my spellchecker, it’s still beyond the ken of many 
conservative lenders who’ve learned the hard way that innovations like 
collateral debt obligations(?), credit default swaps(?), or “communal” 
living(?) can take down their banks.

RESOURCE DEPLETION:  Since I started practice, world population has just about 
doubled, to about 8 billion people.  That’s a lot of us.  And we’re all very 
hungry.  In the same time frame, available land surface has slightly declined, 
due to oceans rising; and old growth forest coverage is withering away.  So we 
have increasingly large numbers of people chasing declining resources.  Timber 
used for house framing is skyrocketing in price, and this won’t revert back to 
the 1950s any time soon.
      And then there’s the cost of a buildable site.  When I started my 
practice, the joke was, “All the good land is gone.”  Not a joke any more.  
Unless you get lucky, expect to a pay a lot for a problem lot.

… And … It goes on and on.  My point is not that it’s hopeless, and we should 
give up.  My point is:  Life is getting harder, all around, for a whole bunch 
of mostly legitimate reasons.  So don’t oversimplify, by pointing to just one 
factor.  Like zoning.  Or conservative lenders.  If you really want to be a 
real estate developer, get ready for a long, hard haul.

Thanks,
R Philip Dowds
175 Harvey Street, Unit 5
Cambridge, MA 02140

mobile: 617.460.4549
email:   rpdowds [at] comcast.net

> On Feb 12, 2022, at 11:56 PM, Sharon Villines via Cohousing-L <cohousing-l 
> [at] cohousing.org> wrote:
> 
> It shouldn’t be so difficult. Something is screwy with the system. Cohousing 
> is only good for society — there are no downsides. So why is it so hard?
> 
> Sharon
> 
>> On Feb 12, 2022, at 10:23 PM, Muriel Kranowski <murielk [at] vt.edu> wrote:
>> 
>> What a heartbreaking story that is. I feel so very grateful and fortunate
>> that my coho group succeeded after some hard times for a few years. A
>> successful coho community seems like a miraculous accomplishment, given how
>> hard and how rare it is to make it happen.
>> 
>>  Muriel at Shadowlake Village, Blacksburg VA
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> 
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