Cohousing-L Mailing List: Some (more) of our movement needs to move ... in this direction

[Steve Welzer (stevenwelzer]

I participated with the Mount Eden Ecovillage project -- which never came
to fruition. I was part of Three Groves Ecovillage -- which failed, at
great expense. I followed Rocky Corner Cohousing -- which went into
foreclosure.

And so there is still no eco-communitarian option in the whole
NYC-NJ-Philadelphia area.

Now I’m hoping Altair EcoVillage will get built.

THE PROJECT STARTED IN 1999.

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When the ultimate cohousing ideal can be effectuated -- to have the
prospective future residents initiate, design, and coordinate the
development of their envisioned community -- great. But it seems to me that
there is a craving “out there” for more cohousing than can be created in
that way. So I find this of interest:

https://biv.com/article/2022/02/special-report-innovations-initiatives-overheated-housing-market

. . . article says, re: “cohousing lite” . . . *instead of all the
prospective residents forming a development company and voting on
incremental decisions, a developer manages the construction process and
then sells units to future owners*

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*Innovations, initiatives for an overheated housing market*

Market forces alone are not going to rebalance housing availability and
affordability in Metro Vancouver and other real estate hotspots around B.C.
New ideas and innovation are needed to address those issues on a number of
fronts. BIV has therefore compiled the following list of housing
innovations and initiatives from other regions and other eras as an
inventory of alternatives to the prevailing wisdom of how to address the
ongoing housing crisis in this province.

Cohousing

Background: Cohousing originated in Denmark in the 1960s and involves a
community of private homes clustered around shared space. It has started to
gain traction in Vancouver in the past decade.

Vancouver’s first such project, Cedar Cottage Cohousing, had residents move
into 31 homes on East 33rd Avenue between Victoria Drive and Knight Street
in 2016. Two of those units are rentals, while the others are privately
owned.

A more recent project is Little Mountain Cohousing (LMC), where residents
moved into 25 privately owned units on Quebec Street last spring.

Pros: Amenities include common spaces, such as kitchens and dining areas,
co-working spaces and shared rooftop decks.

LMC resident Lysa Dixon told BIV that the shared space makes all units more
efficient.

Cons: LMC took six years to build, after the first future residents formed
a housing corporation. One resident told BIV that the time-consuming
process tied up capital for much longer than he would have liked.

One solution to that is in the evolving cohousing project, on Main Street,
near East 41st Avenue. It is what some call “cohousing lite,” because
instead of all the residents forming a development company and voting on
incremental decisions, a developer manages the construction process and
then sells units to future owners.

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Steve Welzer
East Windsor, NJ