Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: "Targeting" the wealthy

[Brian Bartholomew (bb]

> One of the main realities is that typical contractors have no
> interest in learning new building methods or working with
> alternative materials, and if you insist that they do, they will do
> so, and charge you double.

To me, researching cheaper building technologies and then finding
contractors who already use them seems like the easiest way to break
the price deadlock.  In my forming group we don't particularly want to
pay the median house price in our area, so we will be looking hard at
semi-factory-built alternatives that are not energy and build quality
disasters like traditional trailers.

How small of a greenspace can be made to feel like a refuge?  Do you
need 10 acres?  Or would 1 do if it were densely forested and
landscaped full of nooks, paths, mazes, treehouses, and such?  Can you
build a coho for ten households on 2 acres?

| And no groups have formed who want to build the kind of off-the-grid
| housing that is allowed in communities like Dancing Rabbit where
| people can live in tents for $3,000 a year. It would be really
| interesting if you wanted to do that.

As someone who is willing to self-build all sorts of alternative
wierdness, I've wondered about that.  Is it that the tastes of
cohousers and ecovillagers simply don't overlap?  That it's banned by
zoning/permitting/licensing/publicity/etc in areas where cohos want to
be?  That coho structures tend to have mortgages, which require resale
values, which requires acceptability to broad tastes?

                                                        Brian