Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: site location/size and children (was Households to Adults

[Jasmine Gold (juturna]

My experience from visiting several cohousing groups in varying stages
of development (with land, building, or already built) has been that for
the most part, a group tends to attract members similar to those that it
already has in its core group. I contributed this to myself. We visited
one group where we really liked the members and the location. They were
mostly middle aged and seniors (15 to 20 households); we would have been
the second family with kids and the only family with young kids. Even
though the group was focusing it's marketing entirely on families with
kids at the time, I wasn't willing to take the chance that they could
get more kids since it is important to me that my son, who is an only
child, have playmates. We joined a group (we were the 11th full member)
where most of the households were younger and there were approximately
10 children 7 and under. Now there are 25 households (out of 30) and
more than 20 kids 8 and under (and I'm wishing there were more older
people!).

Construction isn't going to start until this fall or next spring so we
don't fit the mold of familes joining late. The early families are
mostly in smaller units because they can't afford the four-bedrooms. In
fact we reduced the number of four-bedrooms because of this and now
could use more! My feeling is that families were willing to commit
because they saw the other families and liked them. There have always
been babysitting at meetings, kids sometimes wander into the meetings,
and we still have extremely well-run meetings. The parents didn't even
start investigating the schools until after they joined. The other group
we were considering still has the same make up. 

--Jasmine Gold, Sonoma County Cohousing, Cotati, California
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