Cohousing-L Mailing List: Financing doesn't define cohousing

[Lynn Nadeau (welcome]

Rob Sandelin wrote:
"Another primary difference between the two is that Cohousing is bank
financed, Communes are member financed. 
....If cohousing were self  financed, it would be interesting to see how 
many
aspects of it would change."

Excellent summary Rob. I would only differ in the "bank financed" part. 
It certainly is not part the DEFINITION of cohousing, though it often 
describes it. The mode of financing is simply a very frequent solution to 
the challenge of finding the money. I'm certain RoseWind is not the only 
group, especially among lot-development models, which is self financed. 
Of note also is that, without being bank financed, our cohousing has 
nonetheless chosen to be like your description, and not at all like the 
"commune" description, except perhaps that we have more people with lower 
than that income (which is true of our town in general), and more diverse 
houses (probably typical of lot-development vs group-design process). 

The rest of your description would be a good candidate for cut-and-paste 
filing by us all, for when we inevitably have to answer that question. I 
also appreciate the factual tone, rather than judgemental, since there 
are, we know, communes in which people lead healthy, happy, and admirable 
lives.  While granting that the media do not know that. (With a factual 
definition like this in hand, the whole debate about whether we should 
use the word, with its negative media connotations, is moot.)

Lynn Nadeau



Lynn Nadeau, RoseWind Cohousing
Port Townsend Washington (Victorian seaport, music, art, nature)
http://www.olypen.com/sstowell/rosewind
http://www.ptguide.com

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