Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Hard Decisions

[Sharon Villines (sharon]

on 7/15/2002 8:39 PM, pattymara [at] juno.com at pattymara [at] juno.com wrote:

>  For the first half dozen years of our history we worked
> diligently to fulfill her dream.  We worked for 3 years with the local
> housing authority, investing in lawyers' fees (Kaching! for her lawyer,
> Kaching! for our lawyer)and uncountable hours of meeting time, only to
> find out that it was a "no go" because of several factors, including the
> owner's desire to retain design overview and resale limits.  It took us
> over three years to receive the final "sucker punch" from the housing
> authority dropping the project.

Thank you for this story. One thing I have to remind myself of all the time
is, if it hasn't been done, there is a reason. If you can find and eliminate
the reason, you can do it, but you have to start with the reason, not
banging your head on doors. It drives me crazy.

> Our marketing to seniors was so successful that we ended up with about
> 40% of our membership being over 55, and still a healthy contingency of
> youngsters (over 25 kids at move-in).    We found that the seniors out
> there were the ones with the money...we later created silent second
> mortgages to help two families with kids to more easily afford buying
> their homes.    

We had the same situation -- a senior household being able to loan money to
several households until they could get to closing. DC had a very good bond
program that essentially loaned qualified people their down payment BUT in
cohousing those down payments had to be made almost 2 years before we moved
in. Several of our households could not afford to do this.

Sharon
-- 
Sharon Villines
Takoma Village Cohousing, Washington DC
http://www.takomavillage.org



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