Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: affordable housing - buyers & builders

[Mmariner (Mmariner]

Bill Dean said:

>In my case, and in the case of many others as well, I would lose a lot more
>money by quitting my job and picking up hammer and saw, than I would save
>by doing some of the construction work myself.  Besides, I don't enjoy
>construction work.  I am interested in living with neighbors, not building
>edifices.  I consider that the concept of cohousing is flexible enough to
>include those of us who don't have bulging muscles on our arms.


Bill, on the one hand, I resonate with your assertion:  although I sometimes
enjoy building small projects, I struggle with the pricise measuring it
takes.  But I like painting walls & trim, caulking, etc.  Looking at home
building strictly financially, I, too, would be better off to hire the
building done.

On the other hand, for me there are other considerations.

(1)  One great benefit to living in community is we don't individually have
to do every task:  we can take advantage of the ways we complement each
other's skills, aptitudes and interests.  I'm a crappy carpenter (ask my
brother who's a great one!) but I'm a decent painter.  As a cook I'm bored
following recipes, but most of my culinary improvisations turn out to be
pretty tasty.  I don't have a clue about the plumbing or electrical stuff,
but have a good aesthetic sense about how to decorate.  Ideally, each should
do what they do best.

[Course, if your group's members are all computer nerds whose hands have
atrophied to where all they can do type or click a mouse button, your group
is in trouble!]

(2) Building with local materials can be far better environmentally than
importing from all over the country/world.  Our current home building
paradigm is not even close to being sustainable:  the fuel to transport
materials and the lack of environmentally responsible practices of many
companies doing logging, mining, manufacturing underlies much of the
environmental degradation we're seeing.

(3)  Coho-L long-timers have seen some postings about healthy building
materials -- a great number of today's synthetic or processed materials
outgas or otherwise pollute your house.  I'm not an expert, but I've heard
that some natural, local materials not only are not toxic themselves, but
they allow the house to "breathe" while maintaining good insulation value.

You've may have heard of the "Habitat for Humanity" organization who funds
the building of low cost housing with the new owner-occupant's putting in
sweat equity together with Habitat members.  How about having some low income
folks in your area partner with your group to make some units in the coho
development be affordable.  You would need to ensure skills are taught and
work is supervised by somebody knowledgeable.

PS, if it just isn't in the cards to build the whole site more sustainably,
how about building some structures with local materials to experiment with it
-- maybe a storage building, garage or solar greenhouse??


Mike M