Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: A strategy for affordability

[bb (bb]

> I'm a little puzzled about your response--I was referring to the
> lack of affordability of cohousing.

As I understand it, cohousing is a form of intentional community with
more sharing than the typical condominium, but not sharing of incomes
or a single employment venture.  Nothing in this definition says the
houses must be fancy enough that the entry price is $300K.  In theory,
cohousing could be done in a trailer park or long-term campground.  It
might be being done there now in some parks where the social
atmosphere has encouraged the right kind of sharing to gel.

Isn't the simplest and most obvious approach to cheap housing to start
with a house that's already cheap?  I hope you might wonder: "Why
won't the zoning department approve me to build a brand new trailer
park affordable coho on an infill lot downtown where the jobs and
transportation are dense?"  They won't even permit it made from
self-erected SIP panel Katrina cottage kits, which meet desirable
energy efficiency standards.  That cohousing is expensive is a
political problem, not a building construction technological problem.

> Using a CLT or any other limited equity (e.g. LE coop) model
> requires disconnecting from the notion that housing, in addition to
> providing a home, should also be treated as an investment necessary
> for one's financial future or that of one's heirs.

Like an automobile, a house is a durable good whose value decreases
with time, which requires constant and substantial spending on
maintenance to keep it from falling apart and being ruined.  Nothing
about a house would cause it to appreciate in value, ever, unless it
is the rare collectible classic.  The large outflow for maintenance
and mortgage interest makes a house you live in ineffective as an
investment or savings method.  If the majority of houses appear to
increase in value, much less double, that appearance is make-believe.

> A main problem is the market that, till recently, pushes prices very
> high in many places.

The market?  What kind of buying and selling activity could possibly
make all the boring but workable used cars double in apparent value in
ten years?  How exactly would that work?

Brian