Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Converting PUD to cohousing project

[Bruce Koller (bkoller]

This is in reply to John Deck's message about the condo complex in Santa 
Cruz.  I don't think I responded to you before although I did respond to 
someone else who asked about a similar situation.

This has been one of my fantasies since I first got involved in cohousing 
about three years ago.  I live in central Contra Costa County where there 
are very few sites for new cohousing communities available but a fair 
number of existing condo complexes (most not very suited to cohousing).  
I found an old condo complex, originally garden apartments, I think, that 
was laid out around three small courtyards, with parking at the margins.  
It seemed adaptable to cohousing with just the addition of a common 
house.  My idea was for people to buy a unit if it met their immediate 
needs and then work on two fronts.

In the complex itself, start a dinner club where families take turns 
making dinner for the other members (not pot lucks, which really don't 
save anybody the work of making something for dinner).  This could start 
out with 2 or 3 households and informally add members as people begin to 
see the advantages.  In the complex I was thinking of using, they did 
have a small "club room" that could serve as a mini-common house if the 
dinner club outgrew individual people's units.

The other approach would be to recruit for a cohousing group with the 
idea that people would be on the waiting list for the ability to buy into 
the complex.  By recruiting people with the vision of what the condo 
complex could eventually turn into, you could have those people ready to 
buy a unit when one came up for sale.  As the word got around, you might 
even find that some residents who wouldn't otherwise consider moving 
might be willing to sell to one of the potential buyers you could put 
them in touch with.  This has to be done with some consideration, because 
I wouldn't think you'd want to give the impression that you were trying 
to force non-cohousing folks out of their homes.  I think if you took 
your time and let things happen gradually, you might find that the folks 
who didn't like the increased sense of community would be happy to sell 
(perhaps at a higher price than they could get now) so they could move 
into something with more privacy, like a suburban house.  I guess I see 
the potential here for a win-win situation, with the complex being 
gradually converted into cohousing.

The final step, which might be several years away, would be to get 
everybody to agree to build a true commonhouse (or convert some existing 
space to this function).  I don't see this process being necessarily any 
faster than designing and building cohousing from scratch, but it does 
have the great advantage that you can be living in it now and that the 
group, as it forms, can spend only as much on common facilities as makes 
sense at any point in the process.  No worries about construction loans, 
large sums of money at risk, etc.

Hope this helps and best of luck.

Bruce Koller
Old Oakland Cohousing Group
bkoller [at] viking.dvc.edu