Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Households with Children

[Dahako (Dahako]

Hi -

In Eno Commons, we're a mix of 22 stand-alone single family and paired townhome 
units.  About half the units are four-bedroom and half three-bedroom.  We had a 
two- bedroom cottage design available, but no one chose to build it.

Of our 22 housing units, 14 have kids at least some of the time.  One teenager 
and about 18 other kids 11-years-old and under are around for some or all of 
each week. 

When my husband Bill and I joined the Eno Commons group in 1996, we were the 
only full-fledged members with kids (then 5 and 2, now 10 and 7).  The group 
thought it was about a year from construction (turned out to be two plus with 
landscaping still underway) and the house and commons house designs were in 
very rough draft. Bill and I concentrated very hard on marketing for about two 
years, until the group asked us to step back because we were drawing in too 
many families with kids and we wanted a more representative demographic mix.  

As the result of our experience, I have come to firmly believe that, although 
you can cross demographic boundaries with creative marketing, it is simpler and 
more easily credible to have a family w/kids out there marketing to other 
families with kids, crowing the benefits of cohousing from the point of view of 
experience. Same with attracting other demographics.

And Bill and I, plus three or four other childed families in our group who 
joined well in advance of construction are proof that you don't need houses or 
even house designs to market to families with kids. You need to find 
risk-takers who are already looking for cohousing (or its benefits under 
another name, like a real neighborhood).  Not all adults will cease to be 
willing to take risks just because they became parents.

For starter core groups without families, maybe groups like ours with lots of 
kids can do some kind of video you can show that focuses more strongly than the 
standard video on what cohousing offers households with kids?  The computer I 
have that can do video editing is down, perhaps fatally wounded - but maybe 
someone with video expertise is out on the list and we can shoot some footage 
and send some sound files and you could put it all together? 

Jessie Handforth Kome
Eno Commons
Durham, NC
Where my daughter's non cohousing friends always ask why she has to listen to 
grown-ups who are not her parents and my daughter always says, "I just do."

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