Cohousing-L Mailing List: RE: Block Clubs - Evolving to Cohousing?

[Russell Mawby (russ.mawby]

Regarding lobbying of city government by community associations, part of the
issue is educating community associations to lobby for the appropriate
things (I am assuming that the point is to gain support for future retrofit
cohousing).

In other words, don't assume that lobbying means changing things.  Change
has consequences as well, and, in the political arena, can be much harder to
control.  What you need, as a CA, is to gain support for your vision of
community, and co-operation in finding ways to make it happen.  This, too,
needs to be a collaborative process, just as much as the collaboration
between households.

Specifically, they may not want to lobby for support for "cohousing" as a
type of development, as that would set in to motion a whole process re:
planning, zoning, etc. 

Instead, CA's should figure out what they would like to do in the way of
building in community owned amenties like shared ownership of property,
meeting places, places to share meals, shared laundry, daycare, and then
find out what needs to be changed in existing legislation to acheive those
things.

For example, condominiums are understood to include common areas, including
common rooms, that probably have some form of kitchen facilities.  This is
much different that coming in and asking for a common house where 100 people
will be sharing meals, and yet, from a planning point of view, the resultant
space could be exactly the same.

Russell Mawby                   Ph : (306) 975-7666
Housing Facilitator             Fax: (306) 975-7712
City of Saskatoon
Planning and Building Dept.             
222 - 3rd Avenue North                  
Saskatoon, SK  S7K 0J5          russ.mawby [at] city.saskatoon.sk.ca