Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: How much is your condo insurance? (Eastern Village Cohousing)

[Kavana Tree Bressen (kavana]

Hi Sharon & folks,

Yes yes yes to this post on the insurance issue!  I have totally had 
similar thoughts while reading this thread.  Self-funding insurance 
could make a LOT of sense on the cohousing movement scale.  If organized 
through CohoUS, it would also provide a major benefit and incentive to 
joining the association.  Even grouping up with a few insurance 
providers who provide more reasonable rates in exchange for receiving a 
boost in business could be a solid step ahead compared to now, and much 
more easily reachable than starting a whole new insurance entity.

There's a long historical tradition of self-funding mutual aid societies 
to cover personal needs such as insurance and burial costs of members.  
If you look around there are small vestiges, such as the Grange 
societies, or the word "Mutual" in some bank or credit union names.  
While people in the US are less aware of it these days, the model still 
works.  Part of the longevity of the FEC communities (Federation of 
Egalitarian Communities--these are secular income-sharing groups) over 
the decades has been a joint healthcare fund called PEACH, which is 
self-funded.  Each community puts in a certain amount of money per 
member per month, and in return if a member has a major medical event, 
the fund can pay out to prevent the commune (which is pledged to cover 
members' healthcare needs) from failing.

Harkening back for friends of Laird Schaub, anyone who knew him will not 
be surprised to learn that the PEACH program--which he created, among 
many other accomplishments--had a host of terminology associated with it 
formed entirely of wordplay.  PEACH = Protected Equity Accessible for 
Community Health; the meetings are called TOASTS = Time Of All Sitting 
Together; the reps are MELBAs = Member Expected to Look after Basic 
Affairs; and the administrator is the PIT = Person Into Technicalities.  
Classic Laird!

I recently rejoined this list after many years away.  It's nice to see a 
few familiar names are still active here.  Speaking of which, i've been 
slowly changing my name the past several years, from Tree to Kavana.  
For those i have not connected with before, i'm a freelance trainer and 
facilitator with roots in community living, located in Oregon.  I'll be 
teaching at the upcoming Summit in Seattle and look forward to seeing 
some of y'all there.

Cheers,

--Kavana


On 3/27/2026 10:26 AM, Sharon Villines via Cohousing-L wrote:
> One of the big steps in cohousing is thinking in larger numbers than most of us have 
> had to think about our own housing. One is the leap to making peace with $4,000 to 
> $5,000 a month for insurance. And then the fact that you can’t use it because 
> if you do, all future premiums will be even higher.
>
> What you build determines all your costs forever. You have to have insurance to 
> get construction loans and you have to maintain it to get mortgages. So you are 
> in a chicken-and-egg situation.
>
> (On a hugely different scale, the State of New York decided years ago to be 
> “self-funding.” They figured out that no insurance was less expensive than 
> establishing reserves and budgeting for disasters. Think about how many buildings the state 
> is responsible for and how much each of one those insurance policies would cost. 
> Incomprehensible.)
>
> Does the insurance industry do careful accounting when they insure condos or 
> are they all the same rate, no matter what? I know cohousing people do think 
> about this in many ways, but do they get credit for it from insurance companies?
>
> This is one of those questions that will require big thinking to change an 
> industry. Individual communities will have little luck, I think, with just 
> price shopping.
>
> Remember when we were having trouble getting reverse mortgage loans? Cohousing is perfect for 
> ensuring the safety of reverse mortgages. But changing the rules required a posse to come to 
> Washington to meet with HUD and do lobbying to convince HUD.  Several people were involved 
> — Raines Cohen was the one I spoke with who was hot on the trail. (It was one of his 
> “Where in the world is Raines today" photo shoots on Facebook.)
>
> For designing or renovating architecture for lower risk and thus lower insurance premiums, I 
> have found an accessible source. Perplexity. Yes, AI. It has the best answers I’ve 
> ever been able to find on real estate—and I Iike to do research. I now use Perplexity 
> every day, often several times a day. I just ran this search to get a list of things that 
> lower risk and insurance rates:
>
> https://www.perplexity.ai/search/how-can-condominium-design-ide-tSIOA6G6ShumGsxtscpw8w
>
> The response is long and detailed, so I can’t copy it here, but I encourage everyone to take 
> a look. It would take an effort to detail the risk-lowering features for an insurance company that 
> you have included — we have to convince, not just ask. And find agents who will want to take 
> this on. 80% will like to go with the flow and will not be helpful. They will just say it 
> can’t be done.
>
> A turning point in the 1990s in getting cohousing construction loans was a spreadsheet done 
> by, I think, Muriel, of all the banks that had already given loans to cohousing communities. 
> It was used to convince banks that cohousing communities had already been financed by their 
> own bank and many other banks. “Many” in this context may have been 12-18, but 
> in the 1990s, that made a better argument than 0. (Please add the name of the person who made 
> the spreadsheet of banks if Muriel is not correct.)
>
> Form a posse. Find one person in one or more communities to collect data. 
> Compile it in a spreadsheet and target one or two insurance companies.
>
> Sharon
> ----
> Sharon Villines
> Riderwood Village, Silver Spring MD
> Founding member and 25 years of service in Takoma Village, Washington DC
>
> For extra credit:
> A posse is a group of people, historically summoned by a lawman to assist in preserving public peace, often used in 
> search-and-rescue contexts or colloquially to mean a close-knit group of friends or an entourage. Originating from the medieval 
> Latin term posse comitatus 
> <https://www.google.com/search?q=posse+comitatus&oq=posse&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyBggAEEUYOdIBCDIwNzBqMGo3qAIIsAIB&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&ved=2ahUKEwje7-bwv8CTAxVsk4kEHVzZPPgQgK4QegYIAQgAEAY>
>  ("power of the county"), it now often refers to any group gathered for a shared purpose or a “squad.”
>
>
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Kavana Tree Bressen

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