Cohousing-L Mailing List: Ownership (was: Re: the microflat as a module in affordable inner urban)

[Howard Landman (howard]

> they are still perpetuating a myth that ownership is the only 
> really desirable form of tenure and pandering to that.  It would be my 
> contention that if the same principles were applied to building 
> not-for-profit housing for community ownership renting would not be 
> 'dead money'

Well, arguing against that, we have pattern 79 from A Pattern Language,
which I present here in its entirety (minus graphics).  Since it's been
mentioned so often, I thought it might be nice for people who don't
own it to see a complete pattern (one of 253 in the 1174-page book).

At any rate, neither I nor the authors believe that the desirability of
ownership is a "myth".  There are various flavors that might work, but
they seem to share certain properties in common:


                79 YOUR OWN HOME
        
        ... according to THE FAMILY (75), each individual household
        should be part of a larger family group household.  Whether this
        is so, or not, each individual household, must also have a
        territory of its own which it controls completely - HOUSE FOR A
        SMALL FAMILY (76), HOUSE FOR A COUPLE (77), HOUSE FOR ONE PERSON
        (78); this pattern, which simply sets down the need for such a
        territory, helps especially to form higher density house clusters
        like ROW HOUSES (38), HOUSING HILL (39), which often do not have
        well-defined individual territories for the separate households.

                                * * *
        
        * People cannot be genuinely comfortable and healthy in a house
        * which is not theirs.  All forms of rental - whether from private
        * landlords or public housing agencies - work against the natural
        * processes which allow people to form stable, self-healing
        * communities.

                ... in the imperishable primal language of the human
                heart house means my house, your house, a man's own
                house.  The house is the winning throw of the dice
                which man has wrested from the uncanniness of the
                universe; it is his defense agains the chaos that
                threatens to invade him.  Therefore his deeper wish
                is that it be his own house, that he not have to share
                with anyone other than his own family.  (Martin Buber,
                A Believing Humanism: Gleanings, New York: Simon and
                Schuster, 1969, p.93)
        
        This pattern is not intended as an argument in favor of
        "private property" or the process of buying and selling land.
        Indeed, it is very clear that all those processes which
        encourage speculation in land, for the sake of profit, are
        unhealthy and destructive, because they invite people to treat
        houses as commodities, to build things for "resale," and not
        in such a way as to fit their own needs.

        And just as speculation and the profit motive make it impossible
        for people to adapt their houses to their own needs, so tenancy,
        rental, and landlords do the same.  Rental areas are always the
        first to turn to slums.  The mechanism is clear and well known.
        See, for example, George Sternlieb, The Tenement Landlord
        (Rutgers University Press, 1966).  The landlord tries to keep
        his maintenance and repair costs as low as possible; the residents
        have no incentive to maintain and repair the homes -  in fact the
        opposite - since improvements add to the wealth of the landlord,
        and even justify higher rent.  And so the typical piece of rental
        property degenerates over the years.  Then landlords try to build
        new rental properties which are immune to neglect - gardens are
        replaced with concrete, carpets are replaced with linoleum, and
        wooden surfaces by formica: it is an attempt to make the new
        units maintenance-free, and to stop the slums by force; but they
        turn out cold and sterile and again turn into slums, because
        nobody loves them.

        People will only be able to feel comfortable in their houses,
        if they can change the houses to suit themselves, add on
        whatever they need, rearrange the garden as they like it;
        and, of course, they can only do this in circumstances where
        they are the legal owners of the house and land; and if, in
        high density multi-story housing, each apartment, like a house,
        has a well-defined volume, in which the owner can make changes
        as he likes.

        This requires, then, that every house is owned - in some fashion -
        by the people that live in it.  It requires that every house,
        whether at ground level or in the air, has a well-defined volume
        within which the family is free to make whatever changes they
        want; and it requires a form of ownership which discourages
        speculation.

        Several approaches have been put forward in recent years to
        solve the problem of providing each household with a "home."
        At one extreme there are ideas like Habraken's high density
        "support" system, where families buy pads on publicly owned
        superstructures and gradually develop their own homes.  And at
        the other extreme there are the rural communes, where people
        have forsaken the city to create their own homes in the country.
        Even modified forms of rental can help the situation if they
        allow people to change their houses according to their needs
        and give people some financial stake in the process of maintenance.
        This helps, because renting is often a step along the way to home
        ownership; but unless tenants can somehow recover their investments
        in money and labor, the hopeless cycle of degeneration of rental
        property and the degeneration of the tenants' financial capability
        will continue.  (Cf. Rolf Goetze, "Urban Housing Rehabilitation,"
        in turner and Fichter, eds., The Freedom to Build, New York:
        Macmillan, 1972.)

        Therefore:

        * Do everything possible to make the traditional forms of rental
        * impossible, indeed, illegal.  Give every household its own
        * home, with space enough for a garden. Keep the emphasis in the
        * definition of ownership on control, not on financial ownership.
        * Indeed, where it is possible to construct forms of ownership
        * which give people control over their houses and gardens, but
        * make financial speculation impossible, choose those forms
        * above all others.  In all cases give people the legal power,
        * and the physical opportunity to modify and repair their own
        * places.  Pay attention to this rule especially, in the case
        * of high density apartments: build the apartments in such a way
        * that every individual apartment has a garden, or a terrace
        * where vegetables will grow, and that even in this situation,
        * each family can build, and change, and add on to their house
        * as they wish.

                * * *
        
        For the shape of the house, begin with BUILDING COMPLEX (95).
        For the shape of the lot, do not accept the common notion of
        a lot which has a narrow frontage and a grat deal of depth.
        Instead, try to make every house lot roughy square, or even
        long along the street and shallow.  All this is necessary to
        create the right relation between house and garden - HALF-HIDDEN
        GARDEN (111).


All the patterns have this general form of:
        - introduction and links to larger-scale (lower-numbered) patterns
          which this one helps implement
        - * statement of problem
        - discussion
        - * statement of solution/recommendations
        - links to smaller-scale (higher numbered) patterns which help
          implement this one

Because of the links, the book is essentially hypertext in form - I
sometimes wish it were a website!

Many times one will hear of cohousing groups which require that a unit be
sold for no more than was paid for it.  While I understand the desire to
eliminate the profit motive, I believe that in its pure form this rule is
likely to be quite poisonous.  Suppose an owner wants to improve the unit
in a way that will cost $15,000.  If they are not alowed to recoup those
costs when they sell, then the rule basically forces them to donate that
money to the next owner.  For many people, myself included, this would
not be acceptable, and I probably wouldn't make the improvement.  Similarly
the rule demotivates maintenance, since those costs can't be recovered either.

This rule was proposed for River Rock but (wisely, I believe) never passed.
I personally wouldn't have joined if it had.

        Howard A. Landman
        River Rock Commons
        Fort Collins CO
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