Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Cohousing in Santa Barbara...NOT! (yet)

[Eris Weaver (eris]

> 2. Real estate costs here are obscene.
> 3. Suitable sites for building are scarce.

While these are certainly sizeable obstacles, they are not insurmountable.
(We are in the North SF Bay Area, with very similar parameters.  There are
already two other cohousing groups in various stages of move-in in our
county, and ours is making headway on finding a site.)

> 5. Retrofit vs. new development. 

Can't answer that question for another group, but our group is currently
leaning heavily toward the retrofit model for a number of reasons --
predominately cost & time. 

> 6. What should I do?
> c) email everybody on the list and convene a meeting.

C) would get my vote.  While email is a useful tool for communication and
our group uses it quite a bit, it's not enough without some
face-to-face...after all, you're talking about living with these people!

You've said that you don't want to "drive this thing"...be forewarned,
creating cohousing takes A LOT OF WORK by a committed core group of
people, and while it certainly helps to have a couple of energetic
leader-types, no one person can "drive" -- it's a group effort!

Eris Weaver
Sonoma County Cohousing
http://www.wco.com/~eris/socoho.html