Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: What Co-housing Means For You | Quicken Loans

[Raines Cohen (rc3-coho-L]

Ann -

Thanks for spotting that.

This type of “journalism” exists for two reasons:

1. a place to run their ads, and
2. as a form of Search Engine Optimization (SEO): the linked phrases in the
article, because they are surrounded by “good gibberish” that looks like
intelligent human-written content, get higher ranking for the linked pages
on search engines, because they are trying to deliver the “best” result for
the user, and can be fooled or at least influenced by this kind of thing.
For example, “housing is right for you,” like all the other links, points
to another page on their site, making it more of an authority on the
totally-not-related-to-this-article topic of choosing a type of home.

This is far from the worst I’ve seen, and seems to at least be based around
what we call cohousing without mixing it in with #coliving or home-sharing
or whatever other kinds of community is out there, poorly machine
translated, or written by AI scripts that simply combine words in ways that
look/sound good, regardless of reality. Heck, it even leads with a link to
an academic meta-analysis that basically says “studies say, Cohousing is
good for you.”

It does seem to be written by someone with a journalistic background (a
real named person with a bio), so it is cohesive and does state things
that, by themselves, seem to be technically accurate (even if the lens it
uses looks odd to those of us who actually live in community).

It is funny to see one of the cons listed that cohousing isn’t good for
introverts, as we have studies that found we have a majority of introverts
in cohousing, choosing it specifically because it makes it easy to choose
to connect with neighbors, while maintaining our private space for our
alone time to recharge.

We can learn from this kind of piece by looking at who is the audience and
how does it frame what we do — we can get leverage by building on those
structures that our built up in people’s heads, vs. starting from scratch.
If we can meet them where they are (with a confused idea of what we are),
then we can show them what’s different rather than trying to convince them
that they are all wrong and here’s our story.

In this case, there’s no open comments for us to build conversation around
the article on the site itself, but that doesn’t stop us from rolling with
it on our own community websites and blogs. Think about writing pieces with
titles/leads like:

* “Quicken Loans is calling attention to cohousing, but I think they missed
the real benefit of living in community. Here’s the inside scoop, from
someone who’s lived it.”

* “Quicken Loans says Cohousing is Cool — For Some. Could You Be One of the
Best Matches? Take Our Quiz.”

* “Want to see the reality of living in cohousing — not the BS puff piece
that Quicken Loans just published? Come to our event for National Cohousing
Open House Days next weekend.” (Seems especially relevant for a
multi-community urban/rural interstate virtual event like the “Not-a-Bus
Bus Tour” that Mid-Atlantic Cohousing is putting on next Saturday, Ann)

* “Cohousing: Overwhelming Togetherness? Let’s see what Quicken Loans is
smoking.”

You get the idea. We don’t have to go out and bash and technically analyze
everything that doesn’t match our story that we have to tell. Appreciate
and work with the opportunity, and find ways to have fun getting the energy
to flow where it will do good for you — and your community.

Raines
 Enjoying running into a longtime cohousing seeker from SF (who almost
bought a home at an East Bay Cohousing community) today at a cafe a block
away from my hotel in New Orleans’ French Quarter. We are indeed everywhere!

On Thu, Apr 27, 2023 at 10:53 PM Ann Zabaldo <zabaldo [at] earthlink.net> wrote:

> Hi all — what do you think about this article on cohousing?
>
> On one hand, cohousing is being acknowledged by a very mainstream
> institution.
>
> On the other hand, I don’t know what to make of this blog post.  It seems
> riddled w/ misunderstandings — don’t know where to start …
>
> > https://www.quickenloans.com/learn/what-is-cohousing
>
>