Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Normative definitions of cohousing

[Fred H. Olson (fholson]

On Sat, 27 Feb 1999,  Diane Cano from  Ganas  community on
Staten Island, New York DHCano [at] aol.com wrote:

> 
> I live in an intentional community which is not cohousing, but I subscribe to
> this list because I find that IC's of all kinds share common concerns and
> interests.

Hi Diane,
  I appreciate having you as a subscriber and contributor to cohousing-L.
Contact between various folks in various kinds of IC's is desireable from
my point of view.

Tho I am and advocate of Retrofit Cohousing (see: 
http://freenet.msp.mn.us/housing/cohousing/retrofit
I am using the term "cohousing" less lately to refer to what we are trying
to do here.  I'm thinking more in terms of an "intentional neighborhood" 
sort of reflecting lowered expectations.  But we will only know where we
have evolved to after we've gotten there so the general goals 
of community building that underlie cohousing and IC's in general continue
to motivate us.  

A little update:
Our monthly potluck has been going for about 14 months
and tho it's continuing looks good, so far evolving to a non potluck
format or more frequency hasn't happened yet.  Recruiting folks to move to
the block (two houses available) to participate has not happened
tho one household did move to the block last August and is participating.
Recruiting is impeded by the "less desireable part of town image"
(which is only partly deserved) despite relatively reasonable (tho
increasing) housing prices (about $100K for 3 bedroom, ~1300 sf house).
Of course we could be doing more about recruiting too.

Fred

--
Fred H. Olson  fholson [at] cohousing.org    Minneapolis,MN   55411  
(612)588-9532  Amateur radio: WB0YQM          List manager of:
Cohousing-L  See http://www.cohousing.org and Nbhd-tc --  Twin 
Cities Neighborhood issues list.  See http://freenet.msp.mn.us