Cohousing-L Mailing List: Special interest cohousing [ was: Re: Jewish Cohousing

[Fred H. Olson (fholson]

On Thu, 30 Jul 1998, M. R. Seymour wrote:
> 
>   I'm curious -- I thought that one of the aspects of cohousing was that
> it did not focus on any one particular religious/social/political frame of
> reference.  If you have a specifically Jewish (or Pagan, or Christian)
> intentional community, can it still legitimately be called cohousing?
> 
>   -Maggi
> 

One of the standard responses I make when asked 'could a cohousing
community do such and such' is that a democratically organized group can
do anything they want that is legal and feasible.  When describing
cohousing in general, I usually prefix with "most cohousing groups ..." . 

As long as a specialized group otherwise meets the general description 
of cohousing it's cohousing.

On the otherhand there is the general feeling (difficult to prove and
probably has not been studied in enough depth - maybe for lack of examples
for a case study) that specialized cohousing limits the universe of people
who would be interested in living there thus potentially making it
difficult to recruit residents.  Some specialties might indeed draw enough
interest to overcome this.  Hard to say.

The thing about the original post that got my attention was the open ended
geographic limits.  In Minneapolis many folks are reluctant to move from
their current neighborhood where they have some "sense of community", let
alone to some other place in the country to build a new community. 

Fred

--
Fred H. Olson  fholson [at] cohousing.org    Minneapolis,MN   55411  
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