Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Seattle group seeks property for co-housing

[Fred H Olson (fholson]

Jordan Schwartz <jordan [at] hive-mind.com>
is the author of the message below.
It was posted by Fred the Cohousing-L list manager <fholson [at] cohousing.org>
after changing "digest" subject line to the original and reformatting a
bit.
--------------------  FORWARDED MESSAGE FOLLOWS --------------------

Thanks, Craig for the links and info. I think you're right that the correct
word for what we're trying to establish isn't cohousing. Collective is
probably more accurate, but has a communist taste to it that I was afraid
would put off sellers (but, as you note, perhaps my "hippie kids" phrase did
the same...though with most of us in our late 30's and early 40's, we're
hardly kids and my long-hair is long shorn). I spent my college years is a
co-op, but that's not quite right, either.

Great to see so many successful models right in our own neighborhood, we'll
reach out. It's been frustrating working with realtors for so many months
and see so many properties that are simply too small or irreparably
misconfigured, and then have them slowly fade off and stop sending leads.
What makes our ask a bit of a hard match is that we really want to establish
separate, semi-independent living spaces for the family units AS WELL AS
large common space. It seems that many properties are either separate
apartments or a single house. Finding something that we can transform into a
hybrid has been a nut I haven't cracked.

Jordan

> From: "Craig Ragland" <craigragland [at] gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [C-L]_ Seattle group seeks property for co-housing
>
> Hi Jordan
>
> Are you sure you're intending to create a cohousing community? Or is that
> a label you've selected to make your quest more palatable?
>
> This page from the Coho/US website has the "classic" six criteria:
>
> http://www.cohousing.org/overview.aspx