Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Affordable co-housing?

[Kay Argyle (argyle]

Our low-income one-bedroom unit is available, so we checked the application
requirements for the state low-income housing program that helped us build
it and the others.  To qualify, a single person's annual income must be
under $20K.  Furthermore, they can't be a student, even part-time.

On the subject of small unit design -- my room-mate & I were impressed with
the layout of the one-bedroom and studio units at Trillium Hollow
(Portland).

Trillium Hollow's main residential building is a long rectangle with an
opening midway on the side and a courtyard in the middle.  Most units face
the courtyard.  The small units are (all/mostly?) on the first floor,
excellent for an older couple or single person.  There's an elevator up to
the second level and down to the parking garage, ground level on the
downhill side.

In the one-bedroom we saw, you enter a small lobby area with the bathroom (I
think) on the left and the kitchen on the right.  You walk past a dividing
wall into the living room.  Ahead is a door opening to a small patio on the
outside of the building, and on your left a glass wall with French doors
into the bedroom (a customization, I think, but well worthwhile).  Big
windows in the kitchen look into the courtyard, and in the living room and
bedroom, out to the hillside.

The studio faces out (more private and quiet).  The space is a U, the front
door on the side, a big room at the base, arms forming the kitchen and the
sleeping cubby, and the bathroom in the middle, opening into the sleeping
cubby.  The ceilings are high, and the front wall mostly windows.  The big
room is next to the walk-through into the courtyard, and half of that wall
has windows also, then solid wall opposite the sleeping cubby.  The sleeping
cubby has a storage loft, big enough to put a mattress up there and use the
space below another way.  The main room felt very comfortable
psychologically -- I'm not sure, but it may form a golden rectangle
(1:1.618).  The light is fantastic, except in the sleeping cubby, which is
pleasantly dark.

The liberal windows made both units feel much more spacious than they
actually were, and they both had as much kitchen cabinetry as even our
four-bedrooms.

Kay
Wasatch Commons, SLC
where the one-bedrooms waste space on hallways, and are upstairs(!).
argyle [at] mines.utah.edu
*:-.,_,.-:*'``'*:-.,_,.-:*'``'*:-.,_,.-:*'``'*:-.,_,.-:*

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