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

[Diana Leafe Christian (diana]

Hi John, 

I'm happy to connect you with someone at Genesee Gardens. I'll send it to your 
email address.

Does the group in East Liberty neighborhood of Pittsburgh have a contact 
person? I'd love to know more about their group. I agree with you that urban 
retrofit communities, of the where-we-live-now variety, is a wonderful idea for 
how people can live in community right away, and without the kind of expense of 
developing a new cohousing community or buying into an existing one. From 
reading Jim Schenk's book about Enright Ridge, I'm learning that the rehabbed 
houses on large lots there range from $12,000 (really) to $120,000, with the 
average range being $50,000 to $75,000. This seems unheard of to me, and yet 
it's the truth. What a good idea for regular people who aren't affluent 
professionals or older retirees to live in community together. 
Diana

> On Jul 11, 2023, at 10:37 PM, John Richmond <johnrichmond50 [at] hotmail.com> 
> wrote:
> 
> My wife and I, while residents in Richmond Cohousing, have long been 
> interested in retrofit communities. We are traveling through the Great Lakes 
> this month and had hoped to see Genesee Commons, if not stay for a couple of 
> nights, to get a taste of the similarities and differences in their customs 
> and challenges compared to ours. We've come to think that the retrofit path 
> is the only way other formal cohousing developments will start in or near 
> downtown Richmond going forward given the increasing scarcity of empty lots 
> and rapidly rising prices. Suburban parcels 10-15 or more miles out may still 
> be able to be developed here using more traditional cohousing methods with 
> more traditional amounts of investment capital.
> 
> We've tried contacting Genesee Commons but haven't gotten a response. Perhaps 
> they don't host guests, or perhaps they're very busy at the moment.
> 
> Earlier on our trip we found an eight-house retrofit group with an impressive 
> set of gardens in the East Liberty neighborhood of Pittsburgh.
> 
> John Richmond (that's real, not a stage name)
> Richmond Cohousing VA
> ------
> Date: Mon, 10 Jul 2023 21:24:33 -0400
> From: Diana Leafe Christian <diana [at] ic.org>
> To: cohousing-l [at] cohousing.org
> Subject: [C-L]_ Cohousing that has evolved in existing neighborhoods
> Message-ID: <B49CB199-9AD0-489C-B4A0-5704F262021F [at] ic.org>
> Content-Type: text/plain;       charset=utf-8
> 
> Hello,
> 
> I'm familiar with four communities in cities where people have done this 
> (most with cool videos about their project):
>        (1) Genesee Gardens Cohousing, an urban retrofit community along two 
> sides of a short cul-de-sac street in Lansing, Michigan.
>                 4-minute video 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6eHgnTc7Oys&t=9s....
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