Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: How big is too big (for a house)

[Mary Vallier-Kaplan (marycvk]

Here are my musings on the impact of the size of the unit after almost 10
years of living in cohousing....

I live at Nubanusit Neighborhood & Farm in Peterborough, NH in a community
that was once looked down upon as the highest cost per square foot
cohousing community in the country.  I am not denying that statement but
have learned that a cohousing community needs to reflect the overall
community in which you live and ours does given we have the equivalent of
over 3 acres of land per unit and have used high end architectural and
sustainability features all which reflect comparable new construction.
However we built different sizes of units 1 BR/no basement to 4BR with
attic and basement units to promote a variety of family types and sizes and
hopefully income too.  THis has worked pretty well though there is a 4BR
house with one person and a 3BR with 5 people!

Our units however are quite large too.  What I have noticed over the 10
years of having stayed at maybe 10+ different cohousing communities is that
the communities where the units are smaller there is greater use of the
Common HOuse out of necessity.  No personal laundry room, no extra BR, no
extra family room, a small kitchen, etc. drives people of all ages to use
the common spaces which I believe is an asset.

Mary
Nubanusit Neighborhood & Farm





On Fri, Apr 14, 2017 at 11:16 AM, Joanie Connors <jvcphd [at] gmail.com> wrote:

>
> Maybe you could ask the 3500 sq ft people to build so the house could be
> divided in the future? Who knows, some day they might want to downsize?
>
> Joanie
> still no cohousing in Silver City, NM
>
>
>
>
> On Wed, Apr 12, 2017 at 7:51 AM, Dick Margulis <dick [at] dmargulis.com> 
> wrote:
>
> >
> > Jessie Kome <jehako [at] me.com> wrote:
> >
> >> Do the people providing the funds decide? Does everyone kick in to a
> >> common kitty and the community decides ( as happens during development)?
> >>
> >
> > We have found it useful to separate people's ability to come up with
> money
> > from people's right to have an equal voice in the process. This was an
> > early decision, and we've never had a reason to regret it.
> >
> > Dick Margulis
> > Rocky Corner cohousing
> > Bethany CT
> >
> > WE HAVE CONSTRUCTION FUNDING (commitment in hand; closing on the loan
> > soon)!
> >
> >
> >
> > _________________________________________________________________
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> >
> >
> >
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