Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Affordability -- a new leaf <FWD>

[Fred H Olson WB0YQM (fholson]

Nancy Wight WIGHT [at] WORLD.STD.COM is the author of this message but
due to a listserv problem it was posted by the COHOUSING-L sysop.


> For most of us, summer vacation means two weeks of play, our reward for f
> weeks of work.  Assuming we are employed from age twenty to sixty-five, w
> have had about one-and-a-half fragmented years to ourselves.
> 

You must have read the book "Your Money or Your Life" ;-)

> Cohousing, as it currently exists, is often more expensive than conventio
> housing.  The food is cheaper.  A $200,000 cohousing <unit> will get you
> $2.00 dinners.

I don't know about anywhere else, but this is *not* the case for us.  We 
are putting up houses that are on the average at least $50,000 cheaper than 
the houses in the surrounding neighborhood.  Now, I'm not contradicting my 
last posting, saying our houses are expensive, because they *are* 
expensive, especially when you figure out how much *time* you spend earning 
the money to pay for them.  But the median house price in the area is even 
*more* expensive.  We even have a neighbor who is very upset over this 
whole thing because our most expensive house will be about $75,000 less 
than what he paid for his house, and he's afraid we will "lower the 
property values"!  

The town planners are very happy that we are bringing to the town a 
smaller, cheaper version of house than what already exists there because it 
increases the economic diversity of the population, thus allowing people to 
live there who would otherwise not be able to find an "affordable" house.
> 
> If you have enough money saved up to put a substantial down payment on 
> <affordable housing>, then you probably don't qualify.  It doesn't matter
> you've been living at the poverty level.  Officially, if you have savings
> you aren't poor.

In Acton, MA, it doesn't matter *how* much you have saved up.  They only go 
by your *income*, which has to be less than $39,000 (or $37,000 depending 
upon which formula you use).  This will allow us to have one designated 
"affordable" house in our community, with someone already in our group who 
qualifies to fill it.

> Much of the architecture, design, and resulting effectiveness of cohousin
> dictated by and limited to what the banks will accept.
> 
> To be continued, if there is any interest...
> --
> Martin Tracy          mtracy [at] netcom.com          Los Angeles, CA

This is just a fact of life, the way things are set up in this country.  If 
we don't like it, we'll have to change the system (what am I saying?  I 
must be crazy!  There's *no* *way* I'll take on the system after going 
through building a cohousing community! ;-)

- Nancy
 
 

Nancy Wight                                   wight [at] world.std.com
New View Neighborhood Development