Cohousing-L Mailing List: RE: Anti-Market System: intentional communities may be a better fit than cohousing

[Rob Sandelin (Exchange) (Robsan]

Anti-capatalist rethoric is part and parcel of many intentional communities, 
some of which are completely off the grid, have no mortgages or other 
dealings with banks, grow their own food and create their own livihoods. 
 For those folks who are so inclined, such places may be a better fit than 
cohousing.

Cohousing, which in America and in Denmark is largely based on market rate 
private ownership, all requiring middle-class credentials, with all the 
implications, to be an owner.  There is government support which allows some 
individuals to stretch into the middle-class, but the ownership and class 
model is the same.

An elder in the communities movement and I had an interesting discussion 
about this very thing and her take on it was that cohousing was a way to 
mainstream cooperative living values to the middle-class, sugar coated with 
mortgagable mainstream respectability.  

I network in both worlds, cohousing and intentional communities, and find 
there is a gap of perception between them, caused by incomes, ownership, and 
attitudes thereof.  I once got a suprisingly negative reaction from a fellow 
cohouser once when I referred to cohousing as an intentional community and I 
continually seem to be handicapped in the intentional communities world 
because I live in a cohousing community. I am middle-class and therefore 
suspect I guess.

There is nothing to stop folks from building an off the grid, no mortgage, 
communally owned cohousing group.  If anyone ever  does, I suspect the 
meaning of cohousing will change and perhaps the lines of distinction may 
blur a little for some folks.

Rob Sandelin
Puget Sound Cohousing Network
Northwest Intentional Communities Association
I hang out with both capalists and socialists - boy do they argue