Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Help with thoughts on cohousing benefits

[Raines Cohen (rc3-coho-L]

Cecile,

It sounds like you are trying to position people coming to
visit/study/tour a cohousing neighborhood as a "benefit" to the
surrounding community.

For San Juan Bautista (CA), with a tourism-based economy, that could
well be the case.

However, most built U.S. Cohousing neighborhoods are in conventional
residential settings with typical business service-and-product
economies, and members simply trying to live their lives, the small
number of extra visits and attention that comes from engaging in this
progressive experiment in alternative living (or, as some might
more-accurately characterize it, this escape from the failed
experiment of isolated suburban single-family development for the last
half century) is a distraction or annoyance, not necessarily anything
that would be considered a net benefit to the community.

Sure, most communities have someone who is interested in the larger
movement, a "burning soul" who handles inquiries and outreach, perhaps
supporting tours in regions that have 'em. Maybe a few more neighbors
who will host a visiting cohouser, supporting others and benefiting
from mutual support and visitation (or even exchange) opportunities
when they travel. And others who "get it" about the marketing value of
this type of attention and visibility when it comes to resales... and
finding good neighbors to maintain the community into the future.

But your ordinary neighbors in cohousing, unless they've signed on in
advance to some kind of enviro-educational community-outreach mission,
may well arrange to be indoors or elsewhere for the potentially rude
no-notice tourist visitor (see the "visiting communities" chapter in
Diana Leafe Christian's book "Finding Community" for good tips on how
not to be that visitor). While organized tours and open houses can
provide a "relief valve" that lets communities direct potential
visitors into a single time rather than having to continually host
them, I have seen a kind of "neutron bomb" effect on tours in which
the physical structures remain while the people not-so-mysteriously
vanish when the tour stops by.

As for neighbors of the cohousing community, they might well complain
of feared potential traffic/parking impacts (no matter how minor they
may be in reality), or of potential reductions in their property
values (usually quite the opposite) because business-y (really
educational) activity is taking place in their "backyard" (hence the
perennial call of opponents of development or anything unconventional
or any sort of change: "Not In My Back Yard!" (that's why we call them
NIMBYs).

When your message opened with a call for benefits of living in
community, I expected to see requests for health, environmental, or
financial benefits of community living. If those are among what you
seek, do check out Coho/US boardmember Dave Wann's great book
"Reinventing Community: stories from the walkways of Cohousing" for
anecdotes, or Graham Meltzer's "Sustainable Community: learning from
the cohousing model" for research.

I'm also working on capturing similar "Community Nextdoor" stories for
a website.

And if you want to meet up with some  Northern California Cohousing
members/organizers as part of your research, we can probably set up
some event. The next Coho/US bus tour might be a great place to start.

Raines Cohen, Cohousing Coach
Planning for Sustainable Communities
At Berkeley (CA) Cohousing
Where once we get home we will be delighted to welcome our new
neighbor, a renter who comes with five years of previous cohousing
living experience. In the meantime, we found a housesitter from
Bellingham (WA) cohousing.

Excited by the strong "let's do it" energy and diverse crowd at the
Brooklyn (NY) cohousing meeting last night. They are seriously working
on getting an option, perhaps on an already-entitled project, in as
little as 90 days; the 4 core Member households have invested $30,000
each in anticipation of $600,000ish unit prices; they have several
workshops scheduled with Chris ScottHansen of Cohousing Resources from
the Seattle, Washington area. One of the several newcomers had family
part of Jamaica Plain (Boston, MA) cohousing and effectively conveyed
the transformation from friends saying "isn't that risky" to "wow, its
really nice and impressive what they've accomplished."

And impressed by the turnout and topics at the Mid-Atlantic Cohousing
regional gathering last Saturday at the award-winning green Eastern
Village Cohousing in Silver Spring, MD
http://www.midatlanticcohousing.org/

P.s. Say hi to Tod for me! Its been great to see him at some recent
Silicon Valley area cohousing events. We just confirmed a table at a
regional Unitarian gathering that could be a good opportunity for
outreach.