Cohousing-L Mailing List: Vest Pocket Community, Fairfax, CA

[Joani Blank (jeblank]

age-ID: <960424131619_279605528 [at] emout09.mail.aol.com>
>
>I saw this article in the paper about a community in Marin County, a wealthy
>county just north of San Francisco. Are they really cohousing? Did the
>residents design it? Are they all rentals? How can they afford full time
>staff? Who is Innovative Housing? Anybody know?
>
>Mela Silva
>Southside Park Cohousing

Mela and others, 

Innovative Housing is an organization based in Marin County, but serving the
whole Bay Area. My impression is that they started many years ago to help
get two or more households buy single family houses together at the time
that housing prices in Northern California started to go up dramatically. In
the intervening years they have been involved a whole variety of
alternatives to single family homes occupied by single households. I talked
briefly with Katie (McCamant) about the Vest Pocked Project with which she
is quite familiar. No, it is not classic, or even unclassic cohousing. It is
four or five shared households. Each of the houses has four or five
households living in it. Each household (a number are single parents) has
their own bedrooms (don't know about baths) and there is a common sitting
room, dining room and kithen in each house. It took at least 10 years--Katie
says more like 15--to get built because the neighbors had problems with it.  

I don't know the answer to your other questions, Mela, nor much about
Innovative Housing, but maybe someone else reading this will.

Joani