Cohousing-L Mailing List: any cohousing groups on conversancy land with land leases?

[Raines Cohen (rc3-coho-L]

Someone recently asked me to pass along this question to the list:

> Is there any way I could find out if any cohousing communities are   
> built on land owned by a conservancy on a leased land basis?

I know of just one cohousing neighborhood (Winslow cohousing on  
Bainbridge Island, WA) that uses a coop (vs. condo) structure, but I  
hadn't investigated this topic. Are there any out there? I do know of  
a bunch of limited-equity COOPS around here that use a Land Trust  
with 100-year leases, and that some banks can deal with the  
underlying mortgages as conforming (it may be an issue when the  
mortgage end-date exceeds the land-lease "expiration" date), and I've  
heard TALK of using the cohousing model as a basis for organizing  
tenants and housing on top of land trusts, but I don't know of any  
that use this structure. Perhaps Cobb Hill Farm in Hartland, VT?

This is a separate issue from limited-equity condos (a la my own  
Berkeley (CA) Cohousing) or appreciation-recapture schemes such as  
ElderSpirit in Abingdon, VA use.

And of course, the legal basis for land-leases and land trusts varies  
state-to-state, and I know that legal structures for homeownership  
significantly different in Canada and Australia, so I'd have to say  
the person asking the question is looking for strictly domestic  
examples.

At the same time, since communities using this model might be more  
likely to be "cohousing cousins" or other sorts of communities using  
the cohousing model, I'd be especally eager to know of any that are  
not on the http://directory.cohousing.org/ list. We try to keep it up- 
to-date, but communities that don't go through the typical cohousing  
development cycle and professional partnerships sometimes are "off  
the radar", as it were.

Raines
Cohousing Coach
Planning for Sustainable Communities