Cohousing-L Mailing List: Why a website for low-cost income

[Sharon Villines (sharon]

Reiterating this, perhaps, a bit more clearly. My goal with the sustainable 
housing website is to pull all the information on low income housing together. 
It gets spread out over the years and mixed with “affordable" so it is hard to 
find. It’s lost in the market. That is understandable — affordable and 
market-rate are more doable. I live in now expensive market rate cohousing but 
I remember when owning a home was far out of my reach. And still out of reach 
of members of my family. And I see the effect of that on their lives.

Having all the information collected in on one website and focusing the 
discussion on one list may help low income cohousing move forward faster. It 
will also allow moderating the discussion so it doesn’t drift upward in cost.

Building low cost housing will require the same concept shift that cohousing 
had when it first started and no banks or developers wanted to hear about it. 
And now after 30+ with over 100 examples of success, it is still regarded as 
risky. Low cost cohousing still seems impossible. The only way to make it work 
is to focus efforts.

It take time to develop the website into a truly useful tool, but it will get 
there.

Sharon
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Sharon Villines, Washington DC
"Design is the first sign of human intention." William McDonough