Cohousing-L Mailing List: It takes a village... kid friendly place [was:Marketing Cohousing ...

[Fred H Olson (fholson]

MaryAnn Jones <mabse [at] spublofe.com> is the author of the message below. 
It was posted by Fred the Cohousing-L list manager <fholson [at] cohousing.org> 
after replacing the "digest" subject line.  

MaryAnn, your first post was too good to not have a meaningful subject
line.  Next time you'll you can remember to fix the subject line too. 
Thanks for deleting most of the quoted digest.  I regret that digest mode
subscribers have to take extra steps to reply. 

Fred

--------------------  FORWARDED MESSAGE FOLLOWS --------------------

I have never posted on this list before, but I am no stranger to 
cohousing.  I am an original member of Southside Park Cohousing.  We aren't 
in a particularly safe neighborhood, lousy schools nearby, no grocery store 
or drug store close until recently.  However, we seemed to always have a 
lot of children who live here and it is a very kid friendly place.  A lot 
of us send our children to catholic schools or other private schools, some 
send them to magnet schools.  I can say without doubt that living in 
cohousing was one of the most important influences in my children's 
lives.  We moved in when they were six and ten and I can say that even 
though cohousing offered a play structure and a kids room and plenty of 
friends to play with (at one point all of the little girls, including mine, 
seemed like a swarm of locusts on the site) the most important thing it 
offered was a myriad of adults to care about my children and watch over 
them.  I am a single mother and it was enormously important for them to 
have all of these other people, especially Billy Trainor.  His daughter was 
the same age as mine and he took care of both of them every summer.

I think that what attracted me to the group was that when I went to the 
first introductory meeting at the natural foods coop it was obvious that 
the group treasured children and that they were an integral part of the 
community.  I think that aura of kidfriendliness was the best marketing 
tool they could have had.  Good luck with your community and with getting 
kids.  It wouldn't be much fun without them.  Maryann

At 03:16 AM 12/25/2004, Dahako wrote:
>One of the reasons the Eastern Village decision was easy for us (a family
>with one teenager and one elementary school-ager) was that it is in a good 
>public
>school district (elementary, middle, high, and community college) close to
>lots of interesting cultural stuff.  The neighborhood is very urban, but 
>active,
>safe and near groceries, drugstore, and lots of public transit.