Cohousing-L Mailing List: Affordability [was ​Do Cohousing units maintain their value?

[Sharon Villines (sharon]

> On Oct 18, 2022, at 1:50 PM, Chuck Harrison <cfharr [at] gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> We have started a community discussion at Duwamish Cohousing (Seattle)
> regarding monthly assessment affordability, including the "pledge budget"
> concepts that have appeared on this list in the past. Purchase-price
> affordability (e.g. limited-equity deeds) I fear is beyond our ability to
> grapple with due to the financial impact on current residents.

I just spent 3-4 years studying this issue. I was determined to do whatever I 
could to help those wanting to build affordable communities do it even if all I 
could do was bring them together for with a forum for discussion, provide 
support, and share information on the overcoming the obstacles like zoning and 
construction costs. It may have surfaced the issues for more people but I 
didn’t see the success in getting a group together to build a cohousing 
community that was not competitive market rate housing.

I’m not a big believer in subsidized housing. I think the government has a 
place in ensuring housing availability but if government actually manages the 
housing, the self is in the wrong place. The self has to be in the residents, 
preferably as owners. In some parts of the world, there are living arrangements 
in which the residents have the same power as owners but are not technically 
owners. Their homes are essentially permanent—as permanent as homes can be. In 
the US, however, a renter is a renter and investing self in a rented by the 
hour home is temporary. 

But as long as we want standard market-rate housing, we will have to pay 
standard market-rate prices. 

Just asking the question “Do cohousing units maintain their value relative to 
housing in the area?” is to place the self there. Over there where the self 
can’t afford to be and in the end probably doesn’t want to afford to be. 

If I wanted to afford a huge house on the beach I would have had to maintain a 
very different life style — and to have started as a teenager if not before. It 
would have controlled all my decisions about schools, friends, family, 
occupations, hobbies, clothing, reading, watching, vacations — everything. It’s 
a miracle that I have a cohousing unit that is worth more than I ever thought 
possible. And sad that I won’t be able to sell it to anyone like myself because 
they won’t be able to afford it.

But there are many examples out there of housing built at prices the lower half 
of the economy could afford but those who have the up-front resources to build 
that kind of housing, have it because they built that kind of housing for 
people who had the money to pay for it. No sarcasm intended. It’s just a fact.

Sharon
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Sharon Villines
Takoma Village Cohousing, Washington DC
http://www.takomavillage.org