Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: another try at affordability/diversity

[Diana Steele (d-steele]

Donna,

We are members of the Woodlawn Cohousing Community, a recently-formed
intergenerational, interracial group on the South Side of Chicago.  We have
selected a site in a disinvested area of the city (vacant lots, run-down
buildings), purchased a boarded-up six-flat apartment building and are
taking steps to acquire the surrounding vacant lots from the city of
Chicago.  We are in the process of hiring an architect and securing
pre-construction loans.  The site will consist of a mixture of rehab and
new construction, and will comprise about 30 units.

The area has suffered greatly from capital flight over the last
half-century and is ripe for revitalization.  It's adjacent to the
University of Chicago and is feeling the first wave of gentrification
pressure.  Because development pressure is so great, the site has been
selected and the first stages of financing and design are proceeding at the
same time as we assemble a core group.  Although some of our members come
from outside the community, we are targeting our recruitment efforts at
current neighborhood residents through churches and other organizations in
Woodlawn.

Our group seeks to work within the community that still exists there, not
insulate ourselves from it.  Our stated goal is to rebuild community from
the inside out; using the resources and the people that still live there,
we want to make it a safer, more livable neighborhood.

We are striving to reflect the diversity of the city of Chicago--which is
1/3 white, 2/3 people of color--and provide affordable as well as
low-income (probably lease-to-own) units.  We are struggling with how to
define and express the diversity goal: Do we set quotas? If so, what are
they? Do we achieve it through recruitment? Do we turn away members who
don't fit "the profile"?   This is an issue we've lumped under "fundamental
assumptions" along with rental units, land trusts, limited equity (or
not?), etc., that we plan to discuss during our extended working meetings
in the near future.

In regards to affordability, we want to provide low-income housing, but
haven't figured out how much (what percentage of the units), or how.  If
you get responses from successful diverse/affordable groups I'd love to
hear about it!  I'd love to see the final article, too.  Please do send
quotes back for a pre-publication check.

I prefer not to be quoted on this paragraph, but I'll give you a contact
name and number:  Another group that we've been learning from here in
Chicago is an almost-completed cohousing development on the west side of
the city, in a neighborhood similar to Woodlawn called Lawndale.  The group
is called "Harambee Homes" which means in Swahili "let's get together and
push."  It's sponsored by a local church and consists of eight units plus a
common house.  Seven of the eight units will be occupied by
African-American owners, the last by a white male builder, Perry Bigelow.
>From what I understand, Bigelow, a suburban builder with an interest in
revitalizing the inner-city, became involved in the project four years ago
and has helped push Harambee through legal hurdles, acquired donated
building materials and labor from local contractors, and provided labor and
expertise.  Bigelow plans to sell his house in the suburbs and move into
Harambee when it's completed.  Residents work on the project together
Tuesday and Thursday nights and all day on Saturday.  I think all (except
Bigelow) are first-time home-buyers, and will buy the houses for $40 K
(worth $80 K with about $40 K in, literally, sweat equity).  They are
limiting the equity on the homes--no one can sell for more than, I think,
$50 K, but will require future residents to put in 1500-2000 of community
service (which might include helping build other cohousing developments in
the neighborhood).  Contact: Jake Thompson-Fisher, (312) 522-1500.

Finally, "is cohousing a white middle-class thing?"  NO, look at Harambee's
success.  And NO, cohousing is an adaptation of traditional
community-centered living which is both original and current in cultures
and ethnicities outside the U.S. middle-class.  If anything, white,
middle-class Americans have forgotten how to live together and are now
rediscovering the value of community-oriented housing, while the rest of
the world never forgot in the first place.

We (the writers) are:  Diana Steele, a science writer at the University of
Chicago, white, female, 30s.  Peter Thomas, math graduate student at the U
of C, white, 20s, from Kansas City, MO.  Our fellow WCC members range from
20-something university students to 70-something retirees.  We are black,
white and asian; families, singls and couples.

>--------------------
>
>I'm a member of Commonweal Cohousing Group and an experienced free
>lance writer preparing a 2,000 word article on community and
>cohousing for Sojourner, a monthly feminist publication in Boston.
>
>I'm looking for some comments from you out there.
>
>They've asked me to cover community building and how (if) the
>wishes for affordability and diversity are fulfilled--all related
>to the question of whether this cohousing movement is essentially
>a white middle-class phenomenon (no matter how hard we might try?).
>
>I'm trying valiantly to use the list archives, though technology
>seems not to be helping me, but I really want to ask those of you
>who are interested in these topics to send me a comment or two for
>any part of these questions:
>
>Have you tried to make your cohousing affordable? How? How much
>success? What works or doesn't?
>
>Similarly, have you tried to make your cohousing diverse--in some
>ways reflecting the diversity of America?
>
>PLEASE BE SUCCINCT. (And I do have a deadline, so I need to hear by
>June 18.)
>
>PLEASE DO NOT ANSWER IF YOU ARE NOT WILLING TO BE QUOTED.  I assume
>you give permission by responding. If you request, I will send you
>back whatever I intend to use of what you said... for a check by
>you.
>
>Thank you so very much!
>
>P.S. Cohousing is getting good play in the press in Mass. of late,
>what with construction of New View and Commonweal activity, also in
>the western suburbs. There are also two groups in Cambridge on the
>verge of getting their sites and one just forming in Jamaica Plain
>(part of Boston).
>
>Donna McDaniel


---------------------------
Diana Steele
Science Writer
University of Chicago News Office
5801 S. Ellis Ave., Room 200
Chicago, IL
(312) 702-8366
(312) 702-8324 (fax)
d-steele [at] uchicago.edu

http://www-news.uchicago.edu/
http://www-news.uchicago.edu/South_Pole/South_Pole.html