Cohousing-L Mailing List: Attracting kids

[Catya Belfer-Shevett (catya]

Dan Solitz wrote:
> Greetings Fellow Co Housers
>   My name is Dan solitz and I am a member of the Eugene Downtown  Cohousing 
> Financial Committee.  The main body is considering   a moratorium on signing  
> on new house holds with out  children.  We have seventeen house holds in the 
> membership cue and  twenty four apartment total. It would help if we had some 
> sense of the  historic drop out rate at the time earnest money is due. I do not 
> know  if such a moratorium is legal. And also any insights in attracting  house 
> holds with children would be very much appreciated
>   Thanks, Dan

You've seen some good responses on this, but I'll add:

- Hold your meetings at a family friendly time.
- Provide childcare at your introductory meetings / orientations, and at 
your regular meetings.
- Have decent space for doing kdicare in (e.g., relatively well 
sound-insulated so the kids don't have to constantly hushed)
- Make sure the existing membership can be supportive of kid 
interruptions / parents having to go in and out of meetings.

- Get in touch with local private schools / homeschooling groups / LLL / 
whatever, and advertise or do a presentation for them.
- If you don't have families in your group who can speak to it, use the 
cohousing video or some other testimonials/handouts as to how cool 
cohousing is for kids.


...

We have a bzillion kids, especially little boys, in our group.  Want to 
trade us for some empty-nesters? ;)  Anyone else want to trade us for 
some families with girl-children, preferably pre-teen? ;) :)

        - catya, Mosaic Commons in MA

--
Catya Belfer-Shevett     'This is not the .sig you're looking for.'
catya [at] pobox.com           'You can go about your business.'
                                           'Move Along.'