Cohousing-L Mailing List: Racial diversity and cohousing

[Diana Porter (porterd]

Since i am the one who posted the quetsion that started this discussion, 
I guess it is time for me to weigh back in.

We are a small beginning cohousing group in Cincinnati, a city that 
came to national attention in the last months for problems of police 
brutality and racial inequality.     The April 2001 uprising was a 
wake-up call for some in our city but many have gone back to sleep.  The 
good that has come out of this has been a renewed focus on the quality 
of life for African-americans in our city.  
Home ownership for african-american families has become a development 
priority for our city developers.  We have all the usual road-blocks to 
ownership--from the institutional racism of bank's red-lining 
neighborhoods to the typical rust-belt moving to cheaper markets of the 
higher paying union jobs to middle-class white and Black flight to the 
suburbs leave public schools to languish.  

We are currently looking for property in a particular city neighborhood 
because of its "diversity, rich history and greenspace."  (from our 
vision statement).  The community we are looking into is about 50% white 
and 50% black and is very socio-economically diverse from section 8 
housing to estates that go back to the days when these were the country 
homes of rich folks who lived downtown.  This neighborhood was 15% Black 
in the 1870.  It is a good place for Black and white families to raise kids.

In looking around many of the web sites, it seems that most cohousing 
communities are overwhelmingly white.  I  posted my original question to 
try to get folks to respond to what attempts they have made to make 
their communities more diverse.  I would like to know what works and 
what doesn't.  We are the beginning of this process of building a 
coohousing community and we want to have a diverse group before we go 
too far.  I have heard that some communities have had rental units so 
that lower income folks could move in.  Unless it was rent to own, this 
seems to set up inequalities from the beginning.  Please share your 
ideas and experiences with us.



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