Cohousing-L Mailing List: will TIme requirements for first generation cohousing limit future of cohousing?

[Rob Sandelin (Exchange) (Robsan]

In the discussions along the thread of how do you find the time there is
a interesting seed: That joining a cohousing project requires lots of
time.  This may very much limit the future of cohousing. I was doing a
cohousing pitch the other day and I heard, "Cohousing?, Oh yeah, we
looked into that. Nice idea, but it takes 3 years of meetings to get a
house. No thanks." 

So how many folks are going to go to three years of meetings to get a
house?  What happens now, is that a small group does this, many join the
project when its a year or so out. The intial group somehow carries the
project and funding until the risk is low enough the rest join in.  The
problem: Eventually the number of people who have the resources and time
to start cohousing projects will be used up. Then what?

To afford a $120-160K home in most families, both adults, assuming their
are two, must hold jobs. Add kids to this equation, and your interest in
spending three years in meetings every Sunday drops to a pretty low
level.

First generation cohousing is taking 2-4 years per project.  This is
much too much of a barrier.  I have seen 5 groups in Seattle disappear
because they couldn't make the balance between requirements to be
developers and their dream of community.  There is  this catch 22
situation inherient in this: You need a whole bunch of capital in order
to secure a site, you need a site and a finished, real looking project
to attract the capital you need.  You need a whole bunch of risk takers
in an area which traditionally people are not very willing to take
risks, their home. And you need a cohesive enough group to hold together
under the strain of risk and decision making.  Pretty stiff
requirements.

I hope eventually we can get some sort of national development system in
place, but I am not sure this is possible given the local nature of real
estate development.  There does not seem to be any national real estate
development firms that do residential work. Its all pretty much local.

I disagree that the group needs to be developers at all to form
community. I think that the best route to the future is to let
developers be developers and do that work, and have faciliated community
building happen amoung the residents, teach and learn group process and
decision making, do the design input work, but leave ALL the ugly legal,
permit, etc. details to other people and focus your group energy and
learning to be a group and building a sense of trust and community and
friendship amoung the group.

Thoughts?

Rob Sandelin
Sharingwood
Northwest Intentional Communities Association