Cohousing-L Mailing List: 12 Unit Cohousing - Too Small?

[Ruth Hirsch (heidinys]

Hi, Scott,

I see you have already received a number of responses from similarly sized 
communities.
Here at Cantines Island, in Saugerties,  we built with twelve households— and 
it took a lot of time and work to get twelve at that time.  Eventually the 
small adjacent piece of land went into foreclosure.  It included our parking 
lot— one of our wonderful neighbors, an attorney made sure had a very long ( 
?50? year) lease on the parking lot— but the foreclosure negated that.  So we 
bought that and added houses on that adjacent property.   And a neighbor 
already here bought the other adjacent property with a house and room for  two 
more— and now we are at 19 households.  
But those beyond the initial twelve were not initially anticipated.  




> On Sep 20, 2020, at 6:16 AM, cohousing-l-request [at] cohousing.org wrote:
> 
> Date: Fri, 18 Sep 2020 10:39:43 -0700
> From: Scott Wild <wildscott [at] gmail.com <mailto:wildscott [at] gmail.com>>
> To: cohousing-L [at] cohousing.org <mailto:cohousing-L [at] cohousing.org>
> Subject: [C-L]_ 12 Unit Cohousing - Too Small?
> Message-ID:
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> mail.gmail.com <mailto:CAH2E9khC7F9-UFqHatS1e0jzVaAWt=4brOdVxsvni=xTd9sKzg 
> [at] mail.gmail.com>>
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> 
> First listserv post so bear with me!
> 
> We recently met some kind, motivated folks forming a cohousing group
> around a 1.5 acre parcel near a small city. They're aggressively
> pursuing the parcel as land in the area is rare, expensive, and zoned
> for large single family homes.
> 
> Due to zoning restrictions they're planning on 12 approx. 1,000-1,500
> sq ft cottages, and don't seem immediately interested in lobbying the
> city for more dense permitting - a la duplex/quadplex construction.
> 
> Does anyone have familiarity with smaller cohousing communities? I'm
> aware of Capitol Hill Urban Cohousing, which seems quite successful at
> 9 units, but they're in a fully urban environment.
> 
> Thanks for your input!
> Scott