Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Cohesiveness of community after a sale?

[Sharon Villines (sharon]

> On Jul 21, 2025, at 9:29 AM, R Philip Dowds via Cohousing-L <cohousing-l [at] 
> cohousing.org> wrote:
> 
> I may have a different take on the significance of the founding role.  
> Because it’s not scalable into the future.

I also think that founding members are different than later adds. By founding I 
think of those who first moved in and lived through learning how to manage 
property and hold others accountable (if that is ever possible). The reason the 
criteria can't be the same is that most communities are not close enough to an 
established community to have a good sense of what cohousing is. They are 
signing on to what they think they would like and designing a system that they 
think will work. So initially, it’s a wing and a prayer. But it’s also a time 
for learning a lot about people and what they think cooperation is and how 
interested they are in self-governance.

At Takoma Village the year the Resales and Rental Pod formed was the year they 
realized that there were likely to be 7-8 resales in the next few months and 
that we had become very desirable. Essentially we needed to protect ourselves 
from people who had the money and thought it would be cool to say they lived in 
cohousing — and never lift a finger.

One thing about having an active waiting list is that those who are really 
interested get involved earlier and hit the ground running. They attend 
workdays and meals more often and are often well known to residents who are 
about to move. And other members who have worked with them on workdays can 
share their recommendations. 

> Today, cohousing in America is still a micro-cult activity: Only a tiny 
> fraction of USA residents live in cohousing, or can even find cohousing 
> nearby.  But I like to picture a future where most small towns have several 
> cohousing communities, and cities have dozens or hundreds.  Yes, some 
> candidate cohousers will always choose to find each other, to learn how to be 
> real estate developers, and to create their own brand of brand new community. 
>  But many others will simply shop around, and select an existing community 
> that best serves their lifestyle.

As I announced a few months ago I have moved into a "senior village” that is 
quite large. There are 4 neighborhoods each with 4 residential buildings around 
a clubhouse or commons. All the buildings are connected by enclosed walkways — 
the walk through all of them is a bit more than a mile. Facilities in the 
clubhouses include a casual and a more uppity dining venue. So residents have 
the choice of 8 restaurants. Not all are open for all meals and there are 
buffets on weekends and special cookouts on holidays and some Fridays. There is 
another building with assisted living and memory care and a medical and 
wellness building with a pool. 

The community has about 3,000 members including staff and residents. And more 
than 200 clubs or teams. Some play games, discuss books, movie clubs, crafts, 
computer groups, and my favorite, a group that will help you plan a party. They 
promise that they are experts at ending parties at 9:30 unless otherwise 
appropriate like on New Year’s Eve. My other favorite is a list of people who 
will help with opening jars and things like that. Anyone who wants to form a 
group just announces it and if people join, they have a club. They also plan 
trips —if there is someplace you want to go whether is New Orleans or Wales, 
the group will help you plan it, figure out how much it costs, and how many 
people you need to make it affordable. If people sign up you have a trip. There 
are also work groups who take responsibility for composting, running the resale 
shop to benefit the benevolent fund, and do other cohousing like tasks.

The community is managed by a large not for profit organization, Erikson. Some 
staff work for Erikson and some work for Riderwood. The community has alliances 
with a community college, a high school, and an elementary school. The 
benevolent fund raises money for school uniforms for the elementary school and 
hires the college and high school kids to work, and awards scholarships. The 
social and political concerns would be right at home in cohousing.

There are complaints that the management company doesn’t listen to them, but I 
think the real weakness is that many of the residents don’t know how to 
coordinate in order to clealy formulate and state their preferences to the 
management company. The most recent example was a plan to replace a long 
defunct outdoor swimming pool with a stage for outdoor music. The residents who 
lived by the covered pool objected to the idea of outdoor music and to the 
removal of trees and to the probable loss of songbirds. Forums were arranged, 
one for the people who lived close by and another for everyone. There were loud 
statements about boycotting the meetings because it was playing into the hands 
of the dictators. Others kept a close eye to be sure the announcement of the 
meetings got to everyone. So it was the naysayers vs the good governance people 
who were going to be there full force with a written statement of concerns — 
one they circulated on the community email list for suggestions and corrections.

The meetings went perfectly well. The Erickson people had done the plans in 
order to show their idea clearly and quickly ditched the most objectionalble 
ideas — outdoor music performances and artificial grass. As often happens, the 
planners did not take into account that the village is surrounded by 200 acres 
of trees. And they want to introduce artificial grass? “Oh” was the response. 

The meeting went very well and the discussion will go on until there is a level 
of consensus. One thing that made me question how old the planners were was 
their statement that they were building for the future. Young people now are 
used to having large outdoor music concerts and “we have to be ready for them.” 
 I thought that was a strange statement since everyone here now knows full well 
about Woodstock (a few decades ago) and a million other concerts in parks, and 
is still saying but not under my balcony. People aged 80 are not so wild about 
the things they were wild about at 20 or 30. Or even 40. Riderwood is the same 
age as Takoma Village so some have been here 25 years. Many for 10-15 years. 
There are 25 people over the age of 100 and the Nifty Nineties gather every 
month.

I’ve been surprised at how happy I am to be in groups of people who are all my 
age. There is something calming about it that I hadn’t expected. We have whole 
lifetimes of shared history and experiences. I have a small dinner group on 
Mondays — 4 of 7 or so people show up every week. A neighbor named Peggy seems 
to have a meal group for almost every meal — different people. She’s been here 
15 years.

People organize around interests and also organize around the needs of all the 
residents to be sure Riderwood knows about everyone who may have needs. There 
is plenty of interaction and sharing and cooperative activity. I love it that I 
feel less burdened with not being able to do all the work I needed to have done 
to live comfortably in cohousing. Here the essentials are taken care of. Which 
is the scale problem with cohousing. I have seen the hard workers get burned 
out repeatedly at Takoma Village. It isn’t enough to say, "Well if you are 
working too hard, just stop.” Because then things would sink to the lowest 
common denominator. 

The size of Riderwood makes so many options available and affordable. I imagine 
having, as Philip suggests, 4 or 5 linked cohousing communities. With areas 
designed for different age groups and mixed age groups. People can choose to 
live wherever they choose. To develop such a complex would take a major 
developer group but there would be many advantages. One being at least some 
full-time paid staff. And the ability to hire companies that only do large 
jobs. The windows in my building were just replaced and everyone was dreading 
it. But it was done in such an organized fashion it was totally painless. The 
replacement company had people who specialized in each step of the process and 
they worked efficiently one right after the other. They first took pictures so 
they could put everything back that would be moved away from the windows. They 
used those poles to create a hallway of plastic curtains and enclosed the area 
by the windows. Not a spec of dust when they left. But it was a major 
operation. A condo of 25-35 units couldn’t afford to hire that kind of work. 
And I think we have run out of DIY people who want to jump in and do everything 
themselves.

I’m still trying to understand how Riderwood produces so many meals fresh 
everyday. The menus partially change every month and there are daily and weekly 
specials and there are at least 20 options for each meal. It’s been so long 
since I have eaten home made applesauce that I was surprised that it tasted 
like apples. They cook almost everything from scratch. And one day my Reuben 
sandwich was missing the cheese. And yesterday’s curried lentil soup with 
vegetables didn’t have any lentils — may be 2 or 3 — but I could have sent it 
back and not hurt anyone’s feelings. 

Sharon
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Sharon Villines
Riderwood Village, Silver Spring MD