Cohousing-L Mailing List: Common House Construction Sequencing

[The CoHousing Company (coho]

After hearing  several groups moving into their common house after house
move-in, I wanted to share some thoughts about it.

There may be some financing, cash flow, or other reason that the common
house might not be done at the same time that the houses are finished. I
would like to encourage the group to help the development team to find a way
to make it possible ­ to finish the common house at the same time as the
houses. Move-in is the most critical time to have the common house up and
running.  It is the time that you need the common house most. Your house and
your life is entirely disheveled and a little cooperation goes such a long
way towards making it manageable at such a drastic crossroads. A common
dinner alone is a Godsend, a place to put the stuff that you plan to donate
to the common house, a place to do your laundry, while you are waiting for
your machine to be delivered, or while you are making up your mind as to
whether you will have your own or to use the common laundry available in the
common house makes that choice possible ­ not having the option, makes the
choice much more difficult as you can imagine ­ and tip the scales towards
having your own.

Some common houses are used as much as twenty times as much as others. There
are many architectural factors that make a difference as I mentioned ­ the
feel, the acoustics, the location, the lighting, etc.  But there are others
that are just as important. And the main one is when the building is done.
If the building is done when you move in, it serves you physically and
emotionally. Physically because there is a place to be while your house is
in chaos, because there is a place for your kid to be, because you can build
some shelves or fix a chair that got broken in the move, and of course,
dinner.  Emotionally because I have heard people say oddly enough that they
have never felt so alone as they did when they were among the first to move
into a cohousing community. Uprooted from their previous neighbors, and
sometimes distant from their former community and friends. A common house is
where the new community communes.

And that takes me to the next and most important point: the effect on the
community. When people move from single-family houses to basically single
houses, they by necessity take up all of the same habits that they had
previously. I made dinner for myself, I make dinner for myself; I washed my
clothes in the house, I wash my clothes in my house, etc. Continuing old
habits or more importantly, not embarking on new habits at move-in will
assure less use of the common house by a significant margin when it is
finally finished. And when the common house goes in late, people give it
less attention. If people have settled back into the habit of reading the
paper at home after dinner, forget making the sitting room comfortable and
cozy and expecting to hang around there after dinner to read the paper there
and to discuss the issues of the day. The common house becomes an
afterthought or looks like it is, attention is pulled away and old habits
are not altered.

It also tends to be overwhelmingly more economical to the entire project in
real costs if things that can be done together up front can be done once at
the common house rather than repetitively at each private houses. There are
dozens of examples but the first one that comes to mind is the phone system.

When there is a central phone board location at the common house, the phone
company wires to the main panel there. It is complicated as to why it is so
much more economical but the reasons is that it is so much easier to
coordinate. The phone company and their trenching on site always creates
delays and costs. People will probably have a phone when they move in (but
they may not) but the project is delayed and therefore move-in is delayed.
Not only does it cause delays, but it tends to be a much less flexible
service (harder to change) and less useful to the owner ­ you can do less
stuff with it.  Worse product, costs more and takes more time ­ other than
that it¹s fine.  And I love it when the phone company is not showing up and
people blame it on the phone company when in fact it was all caused long ago
by not planning ahead not to have to rely on them.

If you have any other questions, please call to ask or call Scott Bird at
510-292-0284 at Sonora Cohousing because their strawbale common house was
delayed by water damage.

It is already hard to get a common house done with the houses when you plan
to. At Pleasant Hill we planned to because the bank insisted that we do so
because they independently considered the common house an extension of the
house and integrally part of the value of the house.  They appraised it as
part of the house. And when it became obvious that we were going to be
behind the first move-in we had to bond towards its completion, which cost
the project some time and money. I would consider the risk of that happening
to your project. Maybe not with your current banker but perhaps with the
perhaps more savvy banker that unexpectedly replaces your current one. It is
simply typical with condos that the club house is done when you buy the
condo ­ bankers expect that and when you are trying to sell the project to
the banker as regular condos, it is important.  But even more importantly,
in Pleasant Hill the people who moved in before the common house was done
said repeatedly how they wished that their common house was done so that
they could use it at that critical juncture in their lives. Especially in
terms of not having to do all the things that they did in their previous
house in their now smaller house. The house was designed to have the common
house supplement it ­ with dinner, hosting guests, laundry, kids playing
(especially important in a smaller house) getting the mail and on and on.

So you can see it¹s already difficult even when shooting to complete the
common house when houses are done. If you have any questions about how
important it was to the Pleasant Hill group, call Barbara Lynch at
925-256-1085. And if you want to talk to someone who had a common house
ready at move-in, you can call someone at  Davis Cohousing or Bellingham
Cohousing or Doyle Street Cohousing (my home number is 510-658-5149).

So if it turns out that it has to happen for some absolutely compelling
reason ­ then try to accept it.  It just happens sometimes and you have to
make the most of it. But if you can do things to help the development team
to find a way to get the common house done at the same time as move-in (and
I suspect that you can), than you will be serving yourselves, the community,
and the community at large for a very long time.

Chuck

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