Cohousing-L Mailing List: Something Magical Happened at Takoma Village Last Night ...

[Ann Zabaldo (zabaldo]

… at an event in a Washington, DC cohousing neighborhood, celebrating the 
culmination of a couple of years working on a campaign to benefit cohousing.

Cohousing Coach Raines Cohen, a Cohousing California regional organizer living 
at Berkeley Cohousing, dished out the ice cream and hot fudge to celebrate the 
end of a petition campaign to have HUD treat cohousing condominiums the same as 
all other condominiums for purposes of certifying a cohousing project for 
federally backed mortgage insurance.

Raines and Alice Green visited HUD offices yesterday (Tues. 6/10) to deliver 
the petition and express appreciation and support to the HUD officials who 
brought about the change, and learn about their process. They were joined at 
the meeting by Within Reach movie creator Amanda Kay and Golden Gate 
Cohousing's Sean Culman, and at the party by Alice's employers at salvage 
company Urban Ore, who donated airline miles so she could be there, along with 
members of Takoma Village and nearby Eastern Village cohousing.

The specific circumstance involved Raines’ neighbor, Alice, who wanted to 
obtain a reverse mortgage so she could continue to stay in her home in Berkeley 
Cohousing. She was denied the approval because the regional field office for 
HUD declined to fully review her application because the staff did not 
understand that cohousing has privately owned, fully complete, self sufficient 
homes.

Through the petition, which gathered more than 11,500 signatures in 3.5 months, 
plus a breakthrough in which HUD staff shared cohousing materials from the 
Coho/US national website with condo technical assistance providers, led to 
movement leader Katie McCamant visiting HUD and helping them see that we’re not 
just condos — we’re the best condos around:  lower foreclosure rates, deeper 
reserves, more member participation, etc. All of this means lower risk for 
lenders and ultimately HUD as lender of last resort. (HUD is being super 
cautious since the recession started in 2008.)

Cohousing is the BEST investment a lending institution can make … and it’s UP 
TO US TO MAKE THE CASE.

What Raines, Alice, Katie and others did was to take the initial “defeat” and 
turn it into an opportunity to educate policy makers about cohousing.  Rather 
than hiding our light under a bushel, we need to be showing financiers, 
government agencies, developers, et al what a good, solid investment they can 
have in cohousing.

“Lots of people insisted this petition was futile,” said Raines. However, 
Raines and others kept on pushing doing it in a way that helped allies step up, 
prompting the change. At the celebration last night Raines said, “It’s 
important to know when NOT to listen to people who say ‘it can’t be done’.”

Congratulations, Alice, Raines, Katie and CohoUS volunteers who made this 
milestone possible.

Want to know more about the campaign? Visit:

http://www.AgingInCommunity.com/help-alice/

Best --

Ann Zabaldo
Takoma Village Cohousing
Washington, DC
Principal, Cohousing Collaborative, LLC
Falls Church VA
703-688-2646