Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: We need to find ways to scale this up

[Sharon Villines (sharon]

> On Mar 22, 2022, at 7:42 PM, b farris via Cohousing-L <cohousing-l [at] 
> cohousing.org> wrote:
> 
> My feeling is that communities haven’t shown a commitment to making 
> co-housing affordable. 

I’ve spent the last 3-4 years studying all the things that prevent building 
truly affordable housing — meaning housing that is closer to 50% of market 
price than 80% of market price. Some communities have been able to work in 4-5 
units that meet the guidelines for government subsidies. This, of course, means 
meeting federal requirements and finding households that also meet those 
requirements. When a group is coming together and solving the other issues of 
compatible ideas, location, location, location, and schools, adding on 
government requirements relating to income windows is not so easy.

What I discovered is that the technology for building a living unit for 
$100,000 is totally possible. Build smaller, build with manufactured or prefab 
housing (used to be called trailers). Build Tiny, or build tiny on land where 
you can add on another tiny later. Infill using land behind and between houses. 
Some subdivisions have rather large backyards where just as many tiny houses 
could be built. 

The problems to be overcome are construction costs, land costs, zoning, bank 
reluctance to finance anything outside the mainstream. And, of course, the 
standard expectations of potential homeowners. It might take some education to 
see that that market rate housing is not only _not_ achievable financially but 
is totally unsustainable. It is totally undesirable.

> In 2020, the average size of a single-family home built for sale in the 
> United States amounted to 2,491 square feet. Although in the past five years 
> American homes have been shrinking, since 1975, they have almost doubled in 
> size.

I used to believe that the approach of sneaking low cost units in the middle of 
market rate housing was not the best idea because the market-rate housing would 
be set the norms and expectations that would continue to pressure those who had 
chosen a low-cost lifestyle couldn’t or wouldn’t like to compete with. I no 
longer believe this is necessarily true. Once the community is formed and 
people know each other personally, they work it out together because members 
prefer to have a strong community even when not all households are contributing 
equally financially. “Equal" doesn’t mean "same.” Each person and each 
household is equal, period.

And diversity of class also brings people with a diversity of skills and 
abilities. If the community has professional hikers who are never around on 
weekends, it needs 9-5 people who are.  So I started thinking in terms of 
Strong Neighborhoods. A block or blocks of already built housing perhaps with 
some lots on which houses have been or should be demolished.Blocks that can be 
creatively designed with rehab and infill — even closing off a street to free 
up land. With the increasing number of municipalities allowing ADUs (accessory 
dwelling units) this becomes more imaginable. A toe in the door.

A fabulous organization that is a model for this is Strong Towns. It has 
fabulous advice for avoiding improvements that are not improvements, many 
offered by the federal government, private “donors”, or “free” in other ways. 
Good budgeting, understanding future costs, community control, etc. So I 
decided to switch from “Affordable Cohousing” to “Strong Neighborhoods”. I 
think in websites so my first move was to change the name of my affordable/low 
cost cohousing website to StrongNeighborhoods.info. 

https://www.strongneighborhoods.info/

But I’ve had little time to keep developing it. Too busy reading brilliant 
books and listening to Strong Towns webcasts. I haven’t even had time to write 
book and video recommendations.

The idea of thinking in neighborhoods does bring us back to the early cohousing 
solution of lot development. Land is acquired and individual households are 
responsible for developing whatever kind of building the local zoning and 
community allows. The advantage of this model is that each household can work 
actively to understand what they need and can afford on an individual level or 
with other households to build 2 or 3 household units. 

The most important element is the burning souls who think in terms of making 
things work rather than expecting whatever is allowed — what has already been 
built. Burning souls look for creative solutions and keep at it until they 
succeed. The fun of that is the process of developing a community of others who 
have similar values and objectives.

The middle class solution of building a whole neighborhood of market-rate 
housing is only available to those earning more than the average median salary 
— in many cases considerably more than the median wage. The median wage was in 
$67,521 in 2020. The median house price was $374,900 in 2021. For that 
mortgage, you need at least 10% of the price sitting unneeded in a bank 
account. The cost of housing should be no more than 30% of income. That would 
be a minimum of $20,000 a year that is unneeded elsewhere. Mortgage payments 
plus property taxes, insurance, utilities, maintenance, etc. (If anything will 
make polygamy legal, it might be house prices.)

One challenge to working out new solutions is finding burning souls in the 
_same_ geographic area. Housing is location dependent—period. Perhaps the 
pandemic has broken the expectation of “you have to be in the office” in order 
to be helpful. But while it might be less rigid it is still a fundamental need 
to be near your connections in order to stay connected. Particularly to reduce 
energy use, people need to live near where they work. And if they have 
children, it means near schools as well. 

So organizing cohousing needs a local base of people who share an aim. The key 
to staying together and not getting discouraged before you even get started is 
recognizing that you are already building a community together while working 
toward a housing solution. It’s just less convenient than when living close to 
each other. And having common space is very important. One need that religious 
organizations provide in neighborhoods is community gathering spaces—places 
where a whole community can meet together to discuss and share. (Whether they 
are eating or not.)

Communities are built not for other people but by the people who build them. 
First you need some ideas in order to become a burning soul, then you need to 
find or build other burning souls. How do you get started right now? 

The best ideas always seem impossible but only the impossible ones are worth 
your time.

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