Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: legislation to help housing alternatives

[Jed Stuart (jstuart]

Some of our State Governments, here in Australia, have been operating a
self-build program. The government provides the bridging finance for land
purchase and construction and the participants spend 20-30 hours a week for
1 year, building, under supervision, the easy parts of their home. This is
done in teams. After the year the houses are built. The participants then
start to repay the loan, minus the value of the labour they have put in,
which
is in lieu of a deposit. Seems to work well.

We are hoping to get some of our homes built that way.

We are also thinking about ways that our local Council, Byron Shire, could
support or even promote Cohousing. A green Council  has been returned for
another 4 years and is reasonably sympathetic.

Jed Stuart
Mullumbimby Cohousing

-----Original Message-----
From: Sean Clancy <sclancy [at] mother.com>
To: Multiple recipients of list <cohousing-l [at] freedom2.mtn.org>
Date: Saturday, 9 October 1999 1:48 am
Subject: legislation to help housing alternatives


>
>I've received a request from a staffer for Assembly Member Scott
>Wildman.
>She's looking for ideas on legislation that would help support
>residential
>or business cooperatives. Maybe some of you who were involved in the
>long
>process of starting this community have some ideas on how state law
>could
>make that process easier. Alternatively, maybe you could just describe
>the
>major obstacles you encountered -- like financing -- that might be
>susceptible to a public policy response, and I could pass that
>information
>on to the staffer. Also, if you have names and numbers for others in CA
>who
>might have good ideas on this topic, I could pass those on to Wildman's
>office.
>
>This letter was written by a member in my community.  Please send
>suggestions to me and I'll forward them.
>
>Thanks,
>Sean Clancy  -  sclancy [at] mother.com
>Southside Park Cohousing
>