Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: pre-built or owner- built

[Lynn Nadeau / Maraiah (welcome]

RoseWind Cohousing, Port Townsend WA is one of the "lot development  
model" projects. Buy in covered the cost of the land, the  
infrastructure, the common house, and got you a lot on which to build  
at your own expense and timetable.

We had no choice. as we had only the limited money in the pockets of  
the founders, and others as they joined over the years. Many years  
later (we started more than 20 yrs ago), these are my observations.

For us, it hasn't been a problem that there isn't a visual match  
between the houses. It fits right in to the surrounding neighborhood  
that way. (For that matter, though we did not do so, one can create  
criteria which owner-built homes need to fit, regarding size, siding,  
roofing, whatever. )

It wasn't a problem not to have to meet and work out design and  
construction of individual homes. As a do-it-yourself community,  
without money to hire consultants, architects, developer, etc, we had  
thousands of hours of meeting (and thus, community building) to work  
out our Planned Unit Development proposal, design and have our  
infrastructure installed (roads, sewer, water, power, drainage, phone,  
parking, etc), and design, contract and construct our common house and  
other amenities.

It was short-term helpful that everyone could build to their own taste  
and budget.

And I see drawbacks. Our homes are "too" custom. Each is quite unique.  
This has the potential for two problems. One, if someone has built  
their custom dream house, they are reluctant to leave even if they   
end up not being a good fit with the community. If your house is more  
generic, and you get unhappy in the community, you leave: the house  
doesn't hold you there. Two, when a house does become available, it  
has a more limited pool of potential buyers: it might be 800 sq ft, or  
2800. Might be deluxe or bare bones simple. might be ordinary or a  
dome, a strawbale, might have a solar panel array or a composting  
toilet.And the harder it is to sell a house, the more likely an owner  
is to resort to hiring a realtor, which increases the risk of getting  
new members who are more looking for a house than a community.

We did it and have survived. Thrived, even, one might say. But I would  
counsel more standardization in housing, whether designed by owners or  
the group, if I had it to do again.

Maraiah Lynn Nadeau
www.rosewind.org