Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: the failure of cohousing in the united states

[Fred H Olson (fholson]

First a few comments as list manager.

Douglas Stambler is not and has not been a subscriber to cohousing-L and
has not tried to subscribe but two messages from him were posted
yesterday. 

First I posted a message for him: 
> N Calif housing needed for sustainable living student

Later Chris quoted the "failure" message which had been sent to a number
of people connected with cohousing.

Note that the first message from new subscribers is now automatically
held for review to prevent spammers from subscribing to post.  I dont know
what I would have done with this post...   Tho his perception of
cohousing is far from accurate compared to virtually every knowledgeable
observer I know of, please refrain from using loaded terms like "nutcase".

Fred, cohousing-L list manager



Stepping our of my list manager role...

While most of his points are way off, one is close enough to warrant
comment.

> 2) cohousing in america is elitist - originally an idea from denmark,
> the american version of cohousing is only available to the top 10% of
> income earners in america - methodically excluding people of color and
> the homeless. 

The cost of cohousing is a problem.  While there are some opportunities
for people of limited income, I think they are relatively few.  Of course
the cost of housing in the US is a problem generally. I don't know what
percentage of the US population could afford to spend 30% of it's income
to live in the median priced cohousing unit, but I suspect it is higher
than 10%.  Anyone capable of coming up with this (or similar) statistic?
Raines, could we come up with the median price of a cohousing unit in 
the US?

I encourage people to keep posting examples of relatively affordable
cohousing...


Robert Heinich,  Eno Commons Cohousing Neighborhood,  Durham, NC
(after commenting on affordable options there) wrote:

> BTW, we have found that the larger houses sell faster than the smaller
> design.

A big part of the housing problem in the US is a distribution of income
problem which may be part of the explanation of this quote.

BTW I'm a cohousing 'wannabe' ; I'd like to live in cohousing but I don't. 
It would probably be more accurate to say I dont want to live in cohousing
enough to move far enough or work hard enough to make it happen. Cost is
one factor.  Life is full of tradeoffs.  I have long contended that us
cohousing 'wannabes' outnumber the people who actually live in cohousing
substantially.

Fred

--
Fred H. Olson  Minneapolis,MN 55411  USA        (near north Mpls)
Communications for Justice - My new listserv org.       UU, Linux
My Link Page: http://fholson.cohousing.org       Ham radio:WB0YQM
fholson at cohousing.org   612-588-9532   (7am-10pm Central time)