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

[Sharon Villines (sharon]

On Dec 29, 2003, at 1:51 PM, JoycePlath [at] aol.com wrote:

> In Arcata Ca. we are currently working with a developer to create a
> twenty-four home Cohousing community that will be affordable.  Our 
> strategy is to build
> two story structures with only the first floor (approximately 600 to 
> 800
> square feet) finished with a kitchen, bath, bedroom, and living room.

This is a fabulous idea! Once in you can then do group purchases and 
share labor to finish the upstairs. We do a lot of group purchasing and 
could do much more. It saves money and time.

Another savings is to put the costs of the commonhouse _and 
furnishings_ into the mortgage upfront rather than trying to come up 
with the money later. We did this and it was an enormous benefit. I'm 
only realizing how much now that we are trying to develop some of the 
interest areas, like the workshop. Easier to get money out of the start 
up costs than raising condo fees for rooms that only some of the people 
use.

On commonhouses and saving money -- although ours is well used and 
often we want more room, I'm beginning to believe that a large 
commonhouse is just too much work. We have several areas that are very 
underused -- an office, a workshop, and a music room. They also look 
crumby since no one takes the time to spif them up. We are working on 
dividing the workshop into an active play area and a workshop but 
frankly, no  one has time to focus on these projects. What we really 
need more of is storage, which is what our workshop space became in the 
absence of the workshop tools people wanted. Storage for games, grounds 
maintenance equipment, files, Christmas & holiday decorations, bike 
storage, strollers -- stuff like that.

The most used rooms are the dining room and kitchen, kids room (infant 
- 7 or so), living- tv-smaller meeting room, laundry room, and to some 
extent the exercise room.

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

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