Cohousing-L Mailing List: Ashland COHO wins their appeal to the City Council..

[Cecile Shohet (cshohet]

The Ashland Cohousing Group would like to let you all know that our appeal 
to the City Council was successful!!! 
 Due to intense neighborhood opposition at the Ashland City Planning 
Commission, our
project was rejected (December 2004 -January 2005)! We were asking the city 
for a rezoning - to allow duplexes and a triplex into an area that was zoned 
for single families. Some of the neighbors were not happy with increased 
density, parking issues, noise, property values, etc. and felt a rezoning 
was fundamentally unfair. 
 
We decided to appeal to the City Council (January -May 2005) - our plan was 
to have 13 units on 1.3 acres, 2 of the 13 units would be low income housing 
and would be built by habitat for humanity volunteers. All the rest of the 
homes would be affordable - within the reach of people of median income. 
Additionally, we wanted to add a deed restriction to our homes - that we 
would sell them at the percentage below market value that we bought them for 
(we are acting as our own developers). 

The appeal stirred up dialogue about Ashland's lack of affordable housing 
and what the City was doing to create housing opportunities for median and 
low income folks. On paper the City was committed to affordable housing.. 
Their were numerous letters to the editor etc,. 

Currently, we are being appealed by some of the neighbors to the State Land 
Use Board.. This will take about 6 months..

We would like to thank all those of you who helped to guide us through this 
process with information, ideas and even getting neighbors of cohousing 
groups across the country to write to our city council with letters of 
support for co-housing!! 

Yours, Cecile