Cohousing-L Mailing List: Hello

[Alina Ever (73473.210]

Hi everybody,
 
Myself and some friends have begun the planning for a cohousing community
in the San Francisco Bay Area. We are about 20 people, diverse in class,
race, ethnicity, culture, religion, sexual orientation, age, and other.
And we are committed to being a multicultural community. We are also
committed to finding funding, whether governmental, foundation, or
otherwise to fund our community since many of us are not middle or upper
middle class and we want the community to include us all. Can anyone help
us in terms of funding ideas? We have a lead on a site in Oakland that
the city wants to develop and already has money in place for low- and
middle-income housing. Some of us would like to have a site in the city
and a site in the country (Northern California). Are there any
communities that are two-sited or are thinking about this? We are trying
to include the children in our decisions -- what are other groups
experiences with this? I would love to hear from groups that are working
to be multicultural. At our meetings, we spend some time on business, and 
a lot of time on processing, talking about our feelings re: community,
oppression of young people, people of color, etc.. We also always include
games, songs, etc. to lighten the meetings and include the kids. We have
four adults at each meeting who take turns (usually in twos) hanging out
with the kids. We are working to bring in more members through our
friends and friends of friends. We're not interested in trying to appear
straighter or more middle-class in order to entice folks with money.
Several of us have e-mail and may take turns communicating with this list.
Some of us are interested in actually building our houses/structures. Do
any of you know of communities that have done this? perhaps with Habitat
for Humanity? 

Thank you.
In peace and community!
Alina Ever
San Francisco, CA