Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Coho & Makin' Dough --> Sustainability?

[BILL ZAHAVI, PERF. EXPERTISE CENTER (DTN: 227-3182) (zahavi]

This discussion is confusing me.  There seems to be a tendency to lump a
whole bunch of socially relevent terms together under the heading of
co-housing.  

Sustainability, recycling, car-pooling, saving the earth etc. are all very
nice topics to discuss as long as we keep the proper perspective.  Let's
face it, many of us would love to save the world from our own homes.  There
is no formula that says that co-housing is the way to do that.  In fact,
if we think about it a minute co-housing, as we've defined it here, is not
n homes for n families but rather it is n+1 homes for n families.

Here on the east coast I'm reminded of the people of move to Cape Cod and 
immediately want the bridges behind them closed so no-one else would move 
there.  What they forget is that if the bridges are removed, they would not
be able to get off the cape themselves.

Don't tell me that co-housing is going to do all of the above for me.  I 
for one am attracted to the idea of creating closer bonds with my neighbors.
Co-housing is a forced method of doing this because its not happening in
the traditional neighborhoods.  Some older folks remember the times when
it was happening in traditional neighborhoods.  This unfortunately begins
to look like the Cape Cod syndrome.  The 30 some odd families create the
community and then its closed.  It will be nice when there are a whole lot
of co-housing communities.  We will all carpool to visit each other and
sell them our wares.

JM2Cs

:>) (please don't flame me too badly, I'm realy a nice guy)

Bill