Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Do you know of cohousing that has evolved in existing neighborhoods?

[Joanie Connors (jvcphd]

Back in the 1970's, I lived on a dead-end street near a university where
most of the houses and apartments were rented to students. It became one
big flowing social group after a while, with many deep conversations,
potlucks and front-porch concerts. We helped each other with gardens, minor
maintenance and other problems. A few people were mooches and some were
jerks, but we got along famously during the 2 years that I lived there.
Of course there were no major fiscal or maintenance responsibilities for
the neighborhood as a whole, so conflict was low. Who knows what might have
happened if we hadn't had a hundred-year flood that devastated the area.
They tore all the houses down and it is now a business park (quite ugly).

On Mon, Jul 10, 2023 at 11:31 AM Kathleen Walsh <kathleen [at] positivity.biz>
wrote:

> Many years ago, Sunset Magazine published an article on a group of
> neighbors who lived on the same Portland, Oregon block who removed the
> fences separating their properties and formed a "cohousing-like" community
> based on monthly potluck dinners and informal permission to access the open
> land between their private homes, especially by their children---I believe
> they called themselves "An Ongoing Concern", cleverly inserting the name of
> one of the streets bordering the block, Going Street.
>
> Another group of Portland neighbors formed a de facto "street collective"
> by creating and sharing a handbook describing commitments to pooling
> resources and fostering healthy connections in regular potlucks and action
> meetings focused on building community resiliency—actions like creating
> emergency planning agreements and buying certain products used in
> emergencies collectively.  Street boundaries were used to define their
> Ainsworth Street Collective, which was a sub-set of the larger Cully
> neighborhood.
>
> The members were folks who lived within the defined neighborhood
> boundaries who established a collective identity and purpose.  I don't
> think any financial or labor requirement was a condition of membership.
>
> I believe the original handbook was written by one of the neighbors as a
> thesis project in urban planning or a related field—the concept did move
> forward initially through the work of a few Burning Souls, then grew
> capacity as time went by.  It seems the pandemic may have dampened the
> flame, but the potlucks are starting up again.
>
> Kathleen Walsh
> Portland, Oregon
> ________________________________
> From: Cohousing-L <cohousing-l-bounces+kathleen=
> positivity.biz [at] cohousing.org> on behalf of Kate C via Cohousing-L <
> cohousing-l [at] cohousing.org>
> Sent: Monday, July 10, 2023 7:49 AM
> To: cohousing-l [at] cohousing.org <cohousing-l [at] cohousing.org>
> Cc: Kate C <katetx2001 [at] yahoo.com>
> Subject: Re: [C-L]_ Do you know of cohousing that has evolved in existing
> neighborhoods?
>
>
> Laurie,
> Other than the age focus, this sounds similar to the Village communities .
> Here’s one article. Maybe they’d be a source of information about setting
> yours up. It’d be very cool to connect your neighborhood “Cohousing” with a
> nearby Village providing a wider multigenerational extended family.
>
> Kate
> Sent from my iPhone
> Private
> _________________________________________________________________
> Cohousing-L mailing list -- Unsubscribe, archives and other info at:
> http://L.cohousing.org/info
>
>
>
> _________________________________________________________________
> Cohousing-L mailing list -- Unsubscribe, archives and other info at:
> http://L.cohousing.org/info
>
>
>
>