Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Alternatives for creating inexpensive homes...

[Sharon Villines (sharon]

On Dec 29, 2003, at 12:27 AM, Joani Blank wrote:

> I think that at one point I read that most people who have expressed 
> interest in living in your community up until now are relatively low 
> income folks.  Do you imagine that your higher income 
> investor/residents will be essentially subsidizing  the lower income 
> residents, not by direct loans or grants to them but by carrying the 
> land or infrastructure costs or the costs of building the common 
> facilities? Again, some real dollar projections would be useful and 
> interesting.

And I would add to this that a pressure that many communities have felt 
in the formation period is change to higher or lower cost homes 
depending on the available prospects. Most people who are attracted to 
cohousing want to live in cohousing as their first priority. From there 
they make work what works.

At Takoma Village what worked was a mix of one- and two- bedroom flats 
with two-bedroom/two bath duplexes and 3-4 bedroom townhouses. All 43 
Energy-Star rated with as much green stuff as possible in conventional 
building. Someone else built the place -- we did not. It was more than 
enough work for us to just organize each other and our work and family 
lives without hefting hay bales or raising walls. Not activities that 
the DC government looks fondly on in any case.

Many of our members leave for work early in the morning and get home at 
10:00 and work weekends as well. Most work for non-profit organizations 
of one kind or another -- not high paying jobs. Scheduling meetings is 
hard much less scheduling time to do labor together. Many people do 
jobs here that they can do anytime -- cleaning commonhouse toilets on a 
Sunday night at 10:00 as one person was doing yesterday.

There have also been complaints on the list from people who wanted 
certain ammenities in the commonhouse like an olympic sized swimming 
pool or a quality movie theater that were slashed in the final budget. 
These were people who had started groups with express desires but were 
unable to attract others with the same desires or the funds to support 
them.

It goes both ways when you have to actually get real. Making it work is 
making it work. One way or another, you have to work with the larger 
community in your geographic area.

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

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