Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: More Cohousing in Sacramento Please

[Sharon Villines (sharon]

On Jun 4, 2013, at 1:57 AM, David L. Mandel <dlmandel [at] pacbell.net> wrote:

>  SRO units. If an affordable housing developer wanted to combine a sprucing 
> up of one of the places with introduction of some social amenities based on 
> the cohousing concept, I'd cheer, as long as housing is preserved for the 
> same population.

I saw 60 minutes piece years ago on SRO developments in Oregon. The focus of 
the piece was that the developer could develop there but not elsewhere because 
various building code requirements were prohibitive. They drove up costs 
without driving up quality.

The interesting part in terms of cohousing is that they were very 
cohousing-like. The rooms were clustered around a kitchen and sitting area with 
a laundry on each floor. There was a social services office on the first floor 
with a program for helping residents with necessary health care and financial 
support subsidy issues and some effort at providing a "dorm-counselor." The 
facilities when they were new were very nice and well designed.

The key, however, is maintenance and civil protections. If the people allowed 
to live there have serious mental health or substance abuse problems, everyone 
else becomes a sitting duck. In Manhattan, some of these residents have heavy 
duty locks on their doors to protect themselves from their neighbors.

I was talking to a management consultant yesterday about cohousing. He pointed 
out that we require very high level skills to run a cohousing community. 
Residential real estate development and sales, multimillion dollar residential 
community management and maintenance, community policing, hotel management, 
public facilities management, restaurant management, food service, etc. These 
are well above average in terms of job qualifications.

Sharon
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Sharon Villines
Takoma Village Cohousing, Washington DC
http://www.takomavillage.org