Cohousing-L Mailing List: Bio for Hank Obermayer

[Henry Obermayer (hobermayer]

I just signed onto the cohousing list.  Here's a little background on me.  I'll 
try to 
use the format that you folks have been using as much as possible.

Name:   Hank Obermayer
Birthdate:  7/12/65
Marital status:  Still figuring out what I want.

Family:  My current home (of four), my forming  community, Friends, my garden

Education:   BA & Some grad school in Computer Science, Brown University

E-Mail:   hobermayer [at] igc.apc.org
Home Address:    San Francisco, CA (ask if you want more)
Phone # (optional): (sent when req'd)

Community:  No name yet.  Creating an urban intentional community (urban 
cooperative block?)
Location:  San Francisco
Stage of Development:  Group Formation (have beginnings of a core)

What I do for money:  This...That... (Edit, office work, community 
organizing...see the end of this post)

What I do for fun:  Play Didjeridu (Wind), Saz (Turkish Lute), Tar & Djembe 
(Percussion).  Garden, dance, street theatre, camp, hike, cook, and just hang 
out with my friends.

Favorite thing about community:  A network for communication - personal, 
political, cultural, etc.  Opportunity for growth and support.  Better Food!

Worst thing about community:  Fighting about who ate someone else's leftovers.

If I was in charge, I would: Get rid of those in charge!

(Macro)  Create more personal communication among people.  Give people more 
understanding of one another.  Then make utopia. :-)

(Micro)  Put bike lanes and bike priority streets everywhere.  Orient the scale 
of our communities (intentional and otherwise) toward pedestrians and bikes.  
Create car free zones in cities, etc.

Other:
I've been sort of studying different  aspects of community oriented housing for 
a while.  The standard ideas of CoHousing don't match what I'm trying to create 
for myself, but it's not way off either.  I also have dreams of eventually 
creating a resource center for helping people form intentional communities - 
including CoHousing.  I've been living in various kinds of community housing 
since 1987 with anywhere from 4 to 55 people in them.  I edited and laid out 
the book "Rebuilding Community in America" (the big fat blue one that just came 
out on community oriented housing) and currently work for a nonprofit low 
income housing developer.  I'm hoping to bring more ideas of community into an 
area where people often get too focused on getting housing built and 
rehabilitated while leaving behind many important aspects of community.