Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: A cohousing consultant and workshop

[rehm (rehm]

re: Chris Hanson

The New Cohousing Group in Seattle Washington has used 
Chris Hanson for a "Land Search and Purchase" workshop.

We had met Chris before at a couple tours of the Winslow project.

We have committed to a limited-equity cooperative model
to assure long-term affordability, and we were concerned
that Chris did not have experience with this.

However, we were pleasantly surprised with his attention to
affordability issues, withing the context of the workshop.
Since he had done land search, not without controversy,
for the Winslow group, he had a natural bias towards 
Bainbridge Island (where the Winslow project was located).

I would suggest that you ask him to send workshop handouts
in adavance, to review them.  We received a draft of a
chapter of a book he's writting that covered our workshop
topic, and we found it useful.  In retrospect, more
materials (e.g., model Pro Forma statements) would have
been useful in adavance of the workshop.

I think you'll find him fair and honest and experienced,
and honest about his biases.  

/eric rehm
The New Cohousing Group
Seattle, WA
(206) 783-4821
(206) 865-8904 (w)
rehm [at] zso.dec.com