Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Economic naivete

[IAN_HIG (IAN_HIG]

CASCADE COHOUSING also faced the economic nievety question a couple of years
ago.  We took the pragmatic solution of opting for individual titles for the
units, the owner thus being able to sell on the usuall realestate market.
The owner takes the risks and bears any gains or losses.

We could not afford to put further impediments in the way of new
potential memembers even if we philosphically supported certain ideas.

Another consideration is that if units are not sold at "market price", then
the body that owns the units is accepting the gains or losses in value.  
Unless that body is someone other than the residents (ie something like \

a land trust) then future residents could choose to sell off the whole complex
(if there had been a large inflation in land value) and get all the benefits, 
and iff land values fall future residents would also have to wear that.

Being concerned with affordability having made this decission we went on
to assist in the establishment of a second cohousing group that was 
a non-equity co-operative that would seek government funding (available
where members are low income earners) to build the housing.  Cascade 
CoHousing would then sell some of our sites to the co-operative.  
Unfortunately the co-op is still tied up in red-tape and
has not got its funding yet.

Overall we thought this would be a good solution ie some units
privately owned and others owned by a non-equity co-operative
within the one development.

Ian Higginbottom
Cascade CoHousing
Ian_hig [at] antdiv.gov.au