Cohousing-L Mailing List: Affordable Housing, Lack of Scale, Not Building Costs

[Fred-List manager (fholson]

John Richmond <johnrichmond50 [at] hotmail.com>
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Fred, the Cohousing-L list manager <fholson [at] cohousing.org>
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To Jonathan's thoughts - my first thought on reading the Amazon
example was that Amazon would emphatically not want to build
intentional communities for their employees. The community they form
might encourage them to try to unionize. Any form of housing
established by large, for-profit companies would have to atomize the
people who live there so they can't collectively bargain. This would
seem to go for condo developers too, so their residents can't band
together. So large for-profit corporations seem to be infertile ground
for cohousing or community building.

Your thought on scarcity, however, seems right on target. The number
of burning souls is probably very low indeed. Is the 500 Communities
program an attempt to get around the fact that burning souls are in
limited supply? I think Katie has developed it.

I know that in general I heard about cohousing in 2001 and rejected it
as an idea. With the prices of housing being quoted to me, I didn't
think I could ever afford it. It took my wife and one of our best
friends seeing a flyer and dragging me to a meeting 11 years to pry my
mind open again slightly. We are still very concerned that we will be
priced out, though at this point I think we're just on the right side
of that affordability line.

John Richmond
Richmond Cohousing (VA - not named after me!)