Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Extrapolation of unit sizes from surveys

[Caren Albercook (calbercook]

Hi Carey,
   I live in Sunward Cohousing in Ann Arbor, MI and
we've been living on site for the last 8 years.  We
have 8 of our 40 units as one bedrooms and this is
where we tend to get the students, people trying on
cohousing and elder members of our community.  (Our
elders also live in 2 and 3 bedroom units.)  These
units turn over more than the others and provide us
with variety in membership as well as a source of
youthful energy in committee work.  As much as parents
delight in cohousing and benefit greatly from
community, (I am a parent of a 3 and 7 year old) they
are busy raising families and don't have as much time
and energy to do the work it takes to manage/
coordinate life together.  So, I encourage you to
provide a variety of sized units to support your
future work together.  Caren

--- Hyghroad [at] aol.com wrote:

> Dear Carey:
> 
> I don't have too much to share, but here are a few
> tidbits from our 
> experience here in Vermont.
> 
>  - I think including some kind of office/den space
> in any unit is critical, 
> people really look for that.
> 
>  - Our smallest unit is 2 bedroom, but our units
> have gotten costly. Having 
> one bedrooms or studios would have helped us with
> the affordability issue. 
> Though, most people that were looking for more
> affordable units were young couples 
> or families so a small unit may have only served
> them in the short term.
> 
> - Once you make a design decision try to stick with
> it. Architectural fees 
> really add up. As most co-housers will tell you,
> making changes to Arch. plans 
> or doing custom work can really hurt the bottom line
> of the budget.
> 
> - We set aside lots that people can buy on which to
> build there own small 
> custom home. We sell the lots and leave the design
> up to the owner with review 
> from the Design Review Team. Almost half of our
> units are these lots. This left 
> an open end for us. 
> 
> 
> Kelly Devine
> Common Pastures
> aka Champlain Valley Cohousing
> Charlotte, Vermont
> http://www.champlainvalleycohousing.org
> 802-425-5030
> hyghroad [at] aol.com
> 
> In a message dated 10/23/2005 4:03:02 PM Eastern
> Daylight Time, 
> arbcoho [at] yahoo.com writes:
> 
> 
> > Hi all, 
> > 
> > Here at Arboretum Cohousing in Madison, Wisconsin,
> > we're pretty excited at being on the verge of
> having a
> > signed offer to purchase our site. From then, we
> will
> > have a limited amount of time to do marketing,
> design,
> > and all the rest of the development work. I'm
> hoping
> > this group can help us and our architect with a
> > question. I spent some time searching for relevant
> > posts (including using the terms in this subject
> > heading and randomly skimming the archives), and
> > didn't find much. 
> > 
> > Here's our dilemna: we currently have 11 active
> > 'equity' members, and are planning for 40 units.
> We
> > did a survey, and the vast majority (9-10) want a
> two
> > bedroom unit. What we need help deciding is how to
> > extrapolate that to decide the unit distribution
> for
> > our 40 units, since it probably won't be a linear
> > extrapolation (i.e. we don't plan on having 36 two
> > bedroom units) We realize that we can design the
> > distribution to target certain demographics: more
> > larger units = more families, studios target more
> of
> > the edges. However, we want to find a mix that
> will
> > accomodate as many different demographics as
> possible,
> > yet still help us sell all our units. We're also
> doing
> > research into the local condo market, but we
> > especially would like to know how other coho
> groups
> > figured this out. 
> > 
> > If you are willing to share your stories,
> wonderful.
> > If you know of other threads or documents that
> might
> > help, and can give me leads to find them, great.
> > Thanks so much.
> > 
> > In community, 
> > Carey Dachik
> > 
> 
>
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