Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Creating more affordable cohousing - a personal story...

[Elizabeth Magill (pastorlizm]

See below!

-Liz
Elizabeth Magill
www.worcesterfellowship.org




On Dec 29, 2012, at 11:44 AM, Ann Zabaldo wrote:
> 
> There are several issues here.  One is Fair Housing Laws -- people more 
> expert than moi can comment on these in more detail.  Generally, FHLs say you 
> can't discriminate against anyone who wants to buy or rent a home.  So if 
> you're selling or renting on the open market and John or Mary Doe comes to 
> purchase or rent and meets all other qualifications you must sell or rent to 
> him or her.

To be clear there is nothing that prohibits general "discrimination". What is 
protected is a group of categories:

Prohibits discrimination in the sale, rental, and financing of dwellings, and 
in other housing-related transactions, based on race, color, national origin, 
religion, sex, familial status (including children under the age of 18 living 
with parents or legal custodians, pregnant women, and people securing custody 
of children under the age of 18), and disability.

Since I'll presume that cohousing communities don't WANT to discriminate in any 
of these ways, then you will find the Fair Housing Laws are your friend. (Over 
55 communities explicitly CAN discriminate against families with children.) It 
also affects what you can SAY in advertisements, and what you need to SHOW if 
you show pictures of potential buyers in ads.
Note that some states have added additional categories that you will want to 
know when marketing your homes.

http://www.justice.gov/crt/about/hce/title8.php


> Another one is ... municipalities that make funding available to developments 
> for affordable housing have an interest in making sure the housing goes to 
> those buyers who meet their income and other requirements.  Some 
> municipalities have a waiting list, others have a lottery.  
> Just these two things make it difficult to build "affordable cohousing."  

I've heard of at least one cohousing community that the price of their market 
rate homes was so low in comparison to the market that they ended up with 
buyers that were not really interested in cohousing.

And in OUR community, we haven't had a single person come through the lottery, 
or through the state system that wasn't interested in cohousing. EVERY single 
applicant wanted to be in cohousing, the affordablity program made it so they 
could afford it.

I think that it is just our (cohousers, including myself) old fears that the 
people who want affordable homes aren't the same as us that makes us (me 
included) worry about getting the wrong people through these state lists. 
At the start Mosaic voted on who could join. At the end we were careful to 
describe who we were and assumed only people who wanted to live here would 
decide to do so.

In my opinion the number of mis-matches in the two systems of joining was 
exactly the same. And the percent of market rate and affordable mis-matches are 
the same as well.

-Liz Magill
www.sawyerhill.org
mosaic commons cohousing in Berlin MA
Where we have 4 affordable homes remaining. Come join us!