Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Co-housing conference call - adjustment

[Raines Cohen (rc3-coho-L]

On Fri, Feb 15, 2008 at 10:17 AM, Ellen Keyne Seebacher
<elle [at] pobox.com> wrote:
>  Aren't there communities in Pasadena and LA?

While there are on-and-off forming groups in the greater L.A. area,
the only group that has a site and is built and operating that we know
of in the region is Los Angeles EcoVillage, which, as an affordable
including-renters nonprofit-owned multilingual project, does not
always call itself cohousing and definitely has a different feel than
most U.S. cohousing neighborhoods. The southernmost "classic"
cohousing projects in California are Tierra Nueva near San Luis Obispo
and Oak Creek Commons in Paso Robles; La Querencia in Fresno in the
Central Valley is under construction, but still several hours North of
L.A.

As recently chronicled on this list, there is new organizing activity
recently in Santa Monica and perhaps some fresh energy around
senior/elder cohousing in the area. One area developer interested in
cohousing, Harold Shapiro, is pursuing an alternative community model
called ElderFire, with meetings around Ventura, that we hope to cover
in a future Cohousing magazine.

Like here in the SF Bay Area, the general housing market is turning,
so we may have more developers coming to us looking for groups to
acquire sites or even entitled or completed projects they can't
otherwise profitable resell. We even have an interested developer with
an approved project here in Berkeley who came to us.

I had some recent discussions with a visiting longtime San Diego-area
cohousing organizer about potential cooperation and co-marketing
throughout the state.

Raines Cohen, Cohousing Coach
Planning for Sustainable Communities (at Berkeley (CA) Cohousing)
Where we are participating in a UC Berkeley online conference on
Aging-Friendly Communities and helping organize and publicize local
Elder's Guild meetings, which employ similar self-assessment process
and community-building to the Senior Cohousing "Study Group 1"
curriculum:
http://seniors.meetup.com/64/

East Bay / Northern California Cohousing Regional Organizer, Cohousing
California
Congratulating Coho/US board member and "Simple Prosperity" author
Dave Wann on wrapping up his California book tour with an appearance
this evening in San Francisco:
The event: http://www.ebcoho.org/
The book: http://www.davewann.com/

Certified Green Building Professional and Board Candidate, Build It Green
http://www.builditgreen.org/