Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Is in-house plumbing and electric a must?

[R Philip Dowds (rpdowds]

I fear there may be some legal obstacles here.  State and local housing and 
sanitation codes typically require minimum conditions of plumbing and heating 
before a structure can be classed as a dwelling unit.  If it’s not a recognized 
dwelling unit, you cannot dwell there, meaning you have no address, meaning you 
can’t register to vote.  And if you’re trying to raise children, you may 
attract the attention of state and local child protection agencies.  And so on.

In rural areas, a fair number of people live off the grid and, by definition, 
out of the mainstream.  These people tend to have a lot of issues.  Sharing is 
good, but cohousing is not camping.

RPD

On Sep 3, 2014, at 6:05 PM, Kay Wilson Fisk <kwilsonfisk [at] comcast.net> 
wrote:

> 
> This is a fascinating concept: is it better to provide
> housing with shared plumbing to decrease the homeless
> population, or is it better to provide more comfort and
> leave the homeless folks in the woods?
> 
> Personally, I would not consider living in housing without
> plumbing and electricity--not, that is, unless I were
> homeless.
> 
> It would be an interesting experiment to build half the
> housing with plumbing and electricity, and the other half
> without. Perhaps the second half could be designed in such a
> way as to allow retrofitting of these utilities at a future
> time if the concept proved to be a problem.
> 
> Kay
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Cohousing-L
> [mailto:cohousing-l-bounces+kwilsonfisk=comcast.net@cohousin
> g.org] On Behalf Of Dane Laverty
> Sent: Wednesday, September 03, 2014 12:48 PM
> To: Cohousing-L
> Subject: [C-L]_ Is in-house plumbing and electric a must?
> 
> 
> Diana just introduced me to Opportunity Village, and now I
> see this link show up on my Facebook feed:
> http://www.tentcityurbanism.com/2014/09/to-plumb-or-not-to-p
> lumb.html .
> 
> Opportunity Village is a 30-unit community of 8x8 structures
> that have no utility hookups. There is a shared central
> facility with water and electricity. The group is looking to
> build a new community ("Emerald Village"), and the town is
> encouraging them to include electricity and plumbing in
> these units.
> 
> So my question for the group: would you consider living in a
> cohousing community where water and electricity were
> provided only to the common house and not to the individual
> units? This is interesting to me as way to reduce costs in
> developing a cohousing community.
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Dane Laverty
> Roseville, CA
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