Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Isolated in Indiana

[juniperjojo (juniperjojo]

To Isolated in Indiana,



I'm pretty sure our cohousing community (Great Oak in Ann Arbor, Michigan) 
currently has rental opportunities, and I think our sister communities 
(Touchstone and Sunward) may also. Also, most communities keep waiting lists, 
so you would be welcome to put your name on the waiting list of any of our 
communities. Probably most if not all cohousing communities in the United 
States have such a list.




Our three communities sit next to one another amid farmland on the outskirts of 
Ann Arbor, a middle-sized university town. There is a variety of ages, as well 
as a mix of singles, families, and couples with no children living at home in 
each of our communities, and each of them has a different "character" -- this 
is something you will find in every cohousing community, and something you can 
only understand if you visit. Every cohouser feels at home in any other 
cohousing community, and yet there are always subtle (and sometimes 
not-so-subtle) differences between them, and these of course are based on the 
personalities of not only the group, but of the individuals who make up the 
group.




If you go to the Cohousing Association website, you can search under "Cohousing 
Directory" on cohousing communities by geographic location, and most 
communities have reasonably up-to-date general information about their 
communities there, as well as links to their own websites:





www.cohousing.org/directory





If you and your husband have a bit of time to travel, I would sugge
st visiting some cohousing communities in your general area. If the information 
on the Cohousing Association website is up-to-date, it would seem that there 
the only communities in Indiana, Illinois, and Kentucky are in the "forming" or 
developing stages (this usually means they have not yet acquired land on which 
to build), but if you live in northern Indiana then a visit to one of the 
cohousing communities in Michigan or Wisconsin might not be out of the 
question. If you're in southern Indiana, then the cohousing communities in 
Georgia or North Carolina might be closest to you.





>From what I have read and gathered from talking to cohousers from other 
>communities, most communities have at least a couple of rental houses or 
>apartments, and I think I read recently on cohousing-L where there is a 
>cohousing community starting up (in California?) that will be entirely 
>rentals. So yes, opportunities are out there, and you and your husband sound 
>like you would be a good fit with many of the cohousing communities I have 
>visited.




Cost may still be an issue as even the per-month rental payment in some areas 
may be out of your budget, depending on how much room you need and where you 
want to live. This is unfortunate but nearly unavoidable unless one can find a 
community which some form of government or private funding and can afford to 
subsidize its rentals at below-market rates. Obviously mortgage and rent costs 
are highly dependent on the part of the country you are looking to move to;
prices tend to be considerably higher on the coasts, and a stand-alone home 
will certainly cost more than a townhome, which will usually cost more than an 
apartment or studio.




But this list is a good place to come for information, and you will probably 
get more than you bargained for, if anything!




Regards,

Jenny Cook

Great Oak Cohousing

Ann Arbor, Michigan

(currently living in Germany and renting out my home at Great Oak)

 


-----Original Message-----
From: cohousing-l-request [at] cohousing.org
To: cohousing-l [at] cohousing.org
Sent: Thu, 7 May 2009 12:16 pm
Subject: Cohousing-L Digest, Vol 64, Issue 8









Hello!  I'm a newbie to the list, as well as a complete newbie to
coho.  I do hope that it's OK to post to the list, if not already
involved in a community of any kind -- but wanting to learn/understand
more.

[...]

However, I am discouraged by much that I have read about cohousing,
and whether or not we could ever find a place for ourselves in such a
community.

[...]

Hope I have not gone on too long.  Please just let me know, frankly,
if this is not the place to search out the type of information we are
seeking.

 >> Isolated in Indiana