Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: No Parking

[Christine Sizer (christinesizer]

I'm in a suburban CO cohousing and we DEFINITELY have parking issues.   We
have around 7 visitor parking spaces.  Not all of our units come with
garages.  Our units that do have garages have had the garages juggled
around, split and sold off as well.  We also have some surface parking, but
we are currently beyond capacity.  This will only get worse as our kids
become drivers.

I think our legal documents say parking spaces must be provided for every
driver in every household.  Parking is assigned by the board of directors.
If you own a garage, you can't be assigned another parking space unless you
have more drivers than garage spaces.

We lost our parking agreement with a nearby office building over our cars
being there overnight which increased his snow removal costs.  Some people
have rented spaces at rental storage companies for their "extra" cars or
stuff.

We're less than 2 miles from the Light Rail, but it's not convenient enough
for most.

We've definitely lost buyers over parking. I know I've considered trying to
buy a 2 car garage from people looking to sell their unit.  I "own" 1/2 of a
2 car garage.  These garage spaces have been traded so much over the years
that people probably don't even know which garages originally came with
which units!

I know most cohousing design doesn't integrate garages close to housing, but
we certainly would have less controversy if our parking were attached to our
units.

I know our BOD is working on a long term parking plan.  It should be very
interesting to see what develops....

Peace,
Christine