Cohousing-L Mailing List: New Member Introduction

[OtisWalker (OtisWalker]

Hi everyone!

I have just joined the list and I want to introduce myself and my cohousing
group.  We are the Westchester Cohousing Community, a group still, alas, in
the planning stages.  The group has been around for about five years, in one
form or another, attempting to build a community in the suburban county just
north of New York City and drawing our members from all over the metropolitan
area.

The fact that we have been struggling so long to get off the ground is due
primarily to the difficulty of finding an appropriate site: land is not only
scarce, but frightfully expensive here and very little of it is zoned for
multi-family housing.

We are investigating right now the feasibility of a particulary lovely site,
a former sanitarium, with many existing buildings that must be renovated (at
a higher cost than building new).  This fact, plus the ever problematic sewer
and water issue, may force us to move on once again. 

We have a core group of eight households, who have made a financial
commitment, and another four associate members.  We hope to have around 25
households.  Diversity is something we strive for and we do have a wide range
of ages represented.  We would like to attract more families with children
and more minority members.  If it were feasible to include some subsidized,
affordable units in our communiity, we would readily do so, but we have
confronted the same discouraging responses to our inquiries in this area as
other groups have.    

We welcome all inquiries and new members!  You may write to us here
(OtisWalker [at] aol.com), or if you are in the area, call 914-639-4146.  We 
have
a lot of questions for the forum, but I will save the barrage for another
time.

Meg Walker

Westchester Cohousing Community
P.O. Box 475
Hastings-on-Hudson, NY 10706