Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Regarding affordability in cohousing

[David Heimann (heimann]

Hello Everyone,

> From Katie's post:

        "Traditionally, your most affordable housing is older homes."

That looks right -- for many folks their first owned home is an older one 
becasue it is older buildings that have the affordable prices.  So that 
leads to a conclusion -- for affordable cohousing use existing older 
buildings.

We've discussed on this list using older housing stock, but with this 
thread and interest in affordable cohousing maybe we can focus again on 
this approach.  I can see several possibilities:

o  An apartment building up for sale.

o  Mutiple duplexes, triples, and/or quads available in a given 
neighborhood.  A cohousing community doesn't necessarily have to be 
physically contiguous, having 30%-70% or more of the neighborhood may be 
sufficient, working its way gradually to 100%.

o  A church or other such building -- a group here in Jamaica Plain nearly 
did this one.

o  A rural farmhouse, barn, and outbuildings, with the barn and 
outbuildings being converted to dwelling units.

o  (Your ideas here)


Thinking outside the "newly-built" box,
David Heimann
Jamaica Plain Cohousing



Date: Mon, 22 Aug 2016 22:54:01 +0000
From: Kathryn McCamant <kmccamant [at] cohousing-solutions.com>
To: "cohousing-l [at] cohousing.org" <cohousing-l [at] cohousing.org>
Subject: Re: [C-L]_ Regarding Affordability in Cohousing
Message-ID:
        <A28FD7D0-05A1-4374-9D9F-131FBBA966FE [at] cohousing-solutions.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"

Sharon said:  Perhaps one way to help communities for low income 
households get built would be to form a non-profit staffed by volunteers 
who could offer the skills to groups that don?t have them.


There is already one?.Partnership for Affordable Cohousing 
http://www.affordablecohousing.org/

But as a society, we have not ever decided that ?good? housing is a basic 
right, so there is very little, highly competitive funding to underwrite 
the cost of housing development to make it more affordable.  This is not 
an issue for cohousing, so much as it is an issue for all new housing 
built in the US.  Traditionally, your most affordable housing is older 
homes but that leaves no room for new, more appropriate housing 
design/solutions that are desperately needed. This issue will not be 
solved by individual cohousing groups, but rather needs political 
attention, at every level.

VOTE!

Katie
--
Kathryn McCamant, President
CoHousing Solutions
Nevada City, CA 95959
T.530.478.1970  C.916.798.4755
www.cohousing-solutions.com