Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: [C-L] Demographics and diversity (or lackthereof)

[Racheli Gai (racheli]

I don't think there is one way to do cohousing "right".  Cohousing 
communities don't have to be
diverse to be "real", or to provide their members with meaningful and 
satisfactory lives,
but wishing to have diversity isn't wrong, either.

For communities who wish to have younger people (and children!) - I 
think that unless special
efforts are made to attract them, they might not join.  And as Larry 
pointed out - economic
and other factors might intervene.  Other things being equal, though, I 
still think that people with
children often wish to join communities that have kids for the owns' to 
play with.  Thinking back
on our joining - it seems to me that our kids would have objected 
strenuously if we attempted to
join a community with no (or almost no) children.  It's also the case 
that we didn't plan to have
more kids, but love having other people's kids around: Cohousing seemed 
to answer this need *for us*.
This isn't to say that everyone has (or should have) identical needs.  
I think it's great to have
communities (coho or other) with lots of variations and different 
flavors.

On the level of "vibes", I'm sensing so much tension around this 
issue...

Racheli.





On Feb 11, 2008, at 1:43 PM, Larry Miller wrote:

> "it's just that the field seems for some reason to attract more women, 
> and in the case of our
> group, more people between 50 and 70. "
>
> Oak Creek Commons has a similar demographic. Out of 35 occupied homes, 
> we have 18 single women,
> 3 single men, and 14 couples. Over half the adults are over 60.
>
> In our case and, I suspect, in many cohousing communities, this is 
> likely to be common for some
> basic reasons. We are located in a small town (25,000) in a primarily 
> agricultural area. Jobs,
> especially high paying ones, are hard to come by. Nevertheless, real 
> estate is relatively
> expensive here. Most of our community moved here from the LA or San 
> Francisco Bay areas, where
> pay was higher, jobs more plentiful, and real estate even more 
> expensive. Thus, our community
> was most appealing to those who had some money or previously owned a 
> home, and did not need to
> find local employment. As a result, our population has a high 
> percentage of retirees and those
> whose jobs can be done from the home, which also seems to be 
> predominately older folks.
>
> We did attempt to encourage a particular demographic, namely families 
> with children, when homes
> came up for resale. The effort has not been successful, as other 
> factors, at least in our area,
> drive the real estate market more than what we can do to influence it.
>
> Larry Miller
> Oak Creek Commons
>
>
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