Cohousing-L Mailing List: RE: Collective housing

[whitney beers (whitneybeers]

We do have that here at Brindledorf and it can be interesting.  We have a main 
house with 5 suites, each with a living room, bedroom, and bathroom.  We share 
a larger living room and large kitchen.  It has worked out well, but I'm not 
sure how it will continue in the future.

The kitchen is a particular problem, as it it generally the area people become 
most passionate about when talking about states of cleanliness, etc.   We 
solved that problem by having an outside cleaning person come in twic a week, 
and having a sense of humor and respect regarding dishes and messes.  The next 
biggest issue is cabinet and refrigerator space.  With two people sharing a 
fridge, it works out fairly well, as they don't get too crowded and food 
"borrowing" tend to be kept to a minimum.

Right now things are moving along successfully enough that we are exploring 
ways to own the house in pieces - currently there is one owner and the space is 
rented to the residents.  At one time in our history we had a difficult period 
that I believe was fueled by having a couple involved rather than all single 
folks - there was some sort of ownership issue that set the balance off and 
made the kitchen seem more "theirs" than "ours."  Could have been just a 
coincidence.

Whitney.

-----Original Message-----
From: Susan Sweitzer <ssweitzer [at] sustainer.org>
Sent: Apr 22, 2005 11:17 AM
To: 'Cohousing-L' <cohousing-l [at] cohousing.org>
Subject: RE: [C-L]_ Collective housing

Cobb Hill Co-housing, in Hartland, VT, built the common house with a wing for
"collective living" in the form of three single room apartments which share two
bathrooms and the common kitchen.  They also have easy access to the entire
common house.  The arrangement has not worked well in spite of great efforts,
patience and open-mindedness from all parties (community and common house
residents.)  We also built one duplex with a shared kitchen which has also not
been successful.  The reasons are many and varied, but essentially we are
finding that shared kitchens and shared bathrooms seem to be particularly
complicated for North Americans.  

Cobb Hill initially wanted to experiment with sharing those aspects of living
which require the most energy inputs and cost the most, that being kitchens,
bathrooms and laundry rooms.  For many, many reasons this seems to require
behavior and attitude changes which are challenging for folks in our community.

I say this knowing the complications in Friends Meeting Houses with collective
kitchens as well, only a very few of which seem to work smoothly and to
everyone's satisfaction.  

I remain convinced this is a good idea, but don't have a lot of useful advice
about how to make it work socially or financially.  Best of luck.

Susan Sweitzer
Sustainability Institute
3 Linden Road
Hartland, VT 05048
802-436-1277
-----Original Message-----
From: Fred H Olson [mailto:fholson [at] cohousing.org] 
Sent: Thursday, April 21, 2005 6:28 PM
To: -cohousing-L mailing list
Subject: [C-L]_ Collective housing

alberta maged <albertamaged [at] hotmail.com> is the author of the message 
below.
It was posted by Fred the Cohousing-L list manager <fholson [at] cohousing.org>
due to  problem.
--------------------  FORWARDED MESSAGE FOLLOWS --------------------


hi, all,

let me once again throw in my five cent question since three of you just
wrote about funding/money:� there is a great need for collective housing
(not commune, not special needs) for working adults that provides private
suites w/ collective kitchen/common areas --has anyone heard of such
places other than the Friends Meeting Houses which have this model or how
we might creatively bring together funds to build such a place?

thanks, bye, Alberta (East Somerville, Massachusetts)


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Whitney Beers
Mabey Bridge & Shore, Inc.
443-790-3532
whitneybeers [at] mabey.com