Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Affordability

[Sharon Villines (sharon]

> "Tobia,Blaise" <tobiabj [at] drexel.edu>
> is the author of the message below. 

> I’d like to respectfully differ with Sharon. Upper "Class" and Upper
> "Income" are very different things. It was because the original post
> and a follow-up post used the terms upper class and middle class that
> I felt compelled to challenge the statements.

This was the point I was trying to make. Income and class are different. In my 
experience in terms of income many people that others would regard as upper 
class actually live on very low incomes. But they have wealth in terms of 
housing and support services that a salaried person doesn’t have. And all the 
money in the world does not make the Nouveau Riche upper class.

I don’t have a good source for definitions of class but I wouldn’t be so quick 
to say that no one in cohousing would be upper class. A sociologist once 
explained a social class called the “noble poor”. People who had been raised 
with the standards of the upper class held the same values and concerns but 
were now destitute. Their lives were lived very differently than those whose 
families did not have centuries of education and politesse.

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